Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

UNESCO

Mr. Rathbone: asked the Lord Privy Seal if he will seek a meeting with the Secretary-General of the United Nations to discuss the future of the United Nations Eucational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation.

The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Douglas Hurd): We see no advantage in this step. The United Nations specialised agencies are autonomous, and we shall do best by continuing to put across our views on UNESCO effectively and directly to the Director General and his staff, as we do now.

Mr. Rathbone: Through those and any other channels available to him, will my hon. Friend miss no opportunity to reiterate to the Director General and others that it is no part of the Government's policy to involve themselves or encourage other Governments to involve themselves in controlling the freedom of the press or broadcasting to report news fairly and without bias? Will he also reiterate that it is the Government's policy not to fund any part of the UNESCO operation or programmes likely to bend such freedom?

Mr. Hurd: That is exactly right. We are worried about those developments and have taken the lead in pointing out to our friends and allies the dangers of any steps within UNESCO to undermine the freedom of the press.

Mr. Christopher Price: Although the United Kingdom national commission and the Government have rightly been critical of the UNESCO proposals for the media world-wide, is it not dangerous for Governments to decide not to fund that part of an international organisation with which from time to time they may disagree?

Mr. Hurd: We pay our share of the UNESCO budget, but we are perfectly entitled to point out within UNESCO activities that we believe should or should not be supported.

Mr. Wilkinson: Is my hon. Friend aware of the new United Nations fund to promote scientific and technological activities in the Third world and developing countries, which has a budget target of $250 million, of which so far only $40 million has been raised, primarily from OPEC countries? The United Kingdom Government have so far not given any money to the fund. Will my hon. Friend look into the matter?

Mr. Hurd: I shall certainly look into it and write to my hon. Friend.

Lebanon

Mr. David Atkinson: asked the Lord Privy Seal what progress has been made in discussions as a result of the European initiative which may help resolve the current situation in the Lebanon.

Mr. Hurd: The European Community's efforts to help find a basis for a comprehensive settlement of the Arab-Israel dispute continue. Any such settlement, or significant progress towards it, would make it easier to find an answer to Lebanon's problems, but the differences within Lebanon can be settled only by agreement among the parties in that country.

Mr. Atkinson: Does my hon. Friend accept the real possibility of an early Israeli attack on Syrian forces in the Bekaa valley and an attempt by Christian Phalangist forces to eliminate the PLO in southern Lebanon? If so, will he consider initiating a Community fact-finding mission to find out what public opinion is in the Lebanon, with the aim of finding a peaceful solution to the problem and eliminating foreign occupation?

Mr. Hurd: My hon. Friend is right about the dangers, and makes an interesting suggestion. However, much is going on already. Mr. Habib is active in tackling the problem between Israel and Syria, the Arab follow-up committee is active in seeking reconciliation generally in the Lebanon and the United Nations is active, with our support, in tackling the problem in the south.

Mr. Mikardo: Does the Minister share President Sadat's recently expressed view that, although many factors have contributed to the awful situation in the Lebanon, the Syrians bear the major responsibility?

Mr. Hurd: That is not a fruitful line of approach. The key to the problem is to strengthen the authority of the central Lebanese Government. If we can find ways in which we can help do that, we shall take them.

Mr. Adley: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that, to his knowledge, the Lebanese Government invited the Syrians into their country but did not invite the Israelis?

Mr. Hurd: That is so.

Mr. Faulds: Will the right hon. Gentleman convey to his European colleagues how offensive the Christian Lebanese find the Israeli pretence to be acting in their defence, both because only a minority of the Christians in Lebanon are supporters of the Fascist Gemayelist policies and because in Israel itself Christian proselytisers are persecuted?

Mr. Hurd: The hon. Gentleman will not draw me into commenting on the internal politics of Lebanon. The answer lies with the Lebanese, in strengthening the authority of the central Government.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. This question comes up several times again.

Cyprus

Mr. Christopher Price: asked the Lord Privy Seal if he will visit Cyprus with a view to discussing with the President of the Republic and the leader of the Turkish Cypriot Community progress towards a settlement.

The Lord Privy Seal (Sir Ian Gilmour): I have no present plans to do so. The high commission at Nicosia is in regular contact with both parties.

Mr. Price: Is the Lord Privy Seal aware that the period between the Turkish Cypriot elections this Sunday and the Greek elections which have now been brought forward to the end of September will provide a unique opportunity for Britain, the United States and Canada, the EEC and other interested countries to apply real pressure to achieve a settlement within that period? Is he further aware that only when the Government of Turkey authorise the Turkish Cypriot community to put forward realistic territorial proposals shall we get anywhere near that settlement, so will he also apply pressure in that direction?

Sir Ian Gilmour: I agree with the hon. Gentleman that, after the Turkish Cypriot elections there will be a period in which the possibilities of reaching a settlement will be good, or at least better than they have been in the past. I also agree that it will need great effort by all parties to reach an agreement. I am not sure that "pressure" is a right or helpful word in this case, and I am not sure, with respect, that the hon. Gentleman is right to point the finger at the Turkish Government. I believe that the Turkish Government are likely to be helpful in this matter.

Mr. Jim Spicer: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the period in which we have the Presidency of the Council would be an ideal opportunity for the Community to take a much higher profile in these matters, particularly in view of the association of Cyprus with the Community?

Sir Ian Gilmour: I appreciate my hon. Friend's point. He will be aware, however, that intercommunal talks have been taking place under United Nations auspices. I believe that those talks have shown some promise already and that we should stick to that approach.

Mr. Dubs: Does the Lord Privy Seal accept that Britain, as one of the guarantor powers in Cyprus, has a greater responsibility than other countries to take initiatives that will lead to a settlement?

Sir Ian Gilmour: I should be most willing to take initiatives if I thought that that would help. As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Worcestershire, South (Mr. Spicer), however, I believe that the best hope for a settlement lies with the present United Nations intercommunal talks.

Middle East

Mr. Walters: asked the Lord Privy Seal if he will make a statement on the situation in the Middle East.

Mr. Hurd: Recent events in the Middle East show clearly the urgent need for a peaceful and comprehensive settlement of the Arab-Israel dispute. We and our partners in the Ten remain determined to contribute to such a settlement.

Mr. Walters: Bearing in mind the unanimous condemnation by the Security Council of the Israeli attack

on Iraq and the continuing overwhelming military predominance of Israel in the area, will my hon. Friend do his best to persuade the United States Government to transform their temporary ban on the supply of F16s to Israel into a permanent ban?

Mr. Hurd: That is a matter for them, but it is satisfactory that the Security Council managed to reach a unanimous conclusion in the debate last week. I hope that that will have some effect on policies world-wide, including policies in Israel.

Mr. Healey: Does the Minister agree that the most important lesson of recent events in the Middle East is the immense danger to world peace in the rapid acceleration of the arms race, conventional as well as nuclear, in the area? Will he consult his colleagues in Europe and in the Atlantic Alliance to see whether some agreement can be reached on halting and reversing that arms race in discussions with the major arms suppliers and with the countries in the area?

Mr. Hurd: That is an ideal, but one which can be realised only with the co-operation of the Soviet Union—which, on past form, is most unlikely to be forthcoming. I draw a slightly different lesson from the events of last week, which is that on the whole it is a mistake for a country to take the law into its own hands in the belief that others will not follow.

Mr. Lawrence: Have the Iraqi Government explained to Her Majesty's Government why they needed weapon grade nuclear material, if it was not to produce nuclear weapons?

Mr. Hurd: That was gone into fairly thoroughly in the Security Council and I think that some of the allegations produced by the Israeli Government to justify their attack have been refuted on technical grounds.

Dr. M. S. Miller: Following the latest talks that Mr. van der Klaauw has had with the PLO representative, has he brought to the Council of Ministers any possibility of a modification in the PLO's line of rejecting even the existence of Israel?

Mr. Hurd: As the hon. Gentleman knows, the PLO has in the past accepted certain international statemenst which in turn accept the right of Israel to exist. I agree with him, however, that there is a long way to go before we can be satisfied. One of the purposes of the contacts that we occasionally have at official level with the PLO and our discussions with other Arab countries is to bring the PLO to say that if Israel accepted the right of the Palestinians to self-determination the PLO would accept the right of Israel to exist.

Lisbon Agreement

Mr. McQuarrie: asked the Lord Privy Seal if, in view of the failure of the Spanish Government to implement the Lisbon agreement, he will seek further discussions with the Spanish Foreign Minister with a view to reaching a firm date for implementation.

Sir Ian Gilmour: The Spanish Government's commitment to the agreement has been reaffirmed and the Foreign Minister is well aware of our view that the sooner it is implemented the better for all concerned. I doubt whether there is anything to be gained by trying to initiate discussions in the way that my hon. Friend suggests.

Mr. McQuarrie: I accept what my right hon. Friend has said, but does he agree that the period of 14 months since the Lisbon agreement was signed is absolutely ridiculous? Does he honestly believe that the Spanish Government have any intention of ever implementing the agreement unless they are forced to do so when they apply for accession to the Community in several years' time?

Sir Ian Gilmour: I certainly agree that a period of 14 months is at any rate rather long. We have conveyed to the Spanish Government our regret that the agreement has not so far been implemented and our wish and hope that it will be implemented before long. I do not accept my hon. Friend's suggestion that we shall have to wait until Spain tries to join the Community, but I fully understand his impatience.

Mr. Russell Johnston: With great respect to the right hon. Gentleman, that is hardly a dynamic response. The Lisbon agreement was signed 14 months ago. How many direct representations have been made to the Spanish Government and what action does he now propose to take?

Sir Ian Gilmour: It was not intended to be a dynamic response. I do not believe that dynamic responses are necessarily the best way to proceed in these matters. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that there have been a number of contacts with the Spanish Government, and they are continuing. The hon. Gentleman will not expect me to be specific about them, but I reiterate the Government's wish and hope that the Spanish Government will carry out the agreement that they entered into.

Mr. Amery: I think that most of us would wish to see a democratic Spain join NATO and the European Community, but will my right hon. Friend make it clear to the Spanish Government that we could not accept that so long as the blockade of Gibraltar continues?

Sir Ian Gilmour: I think that I have often stated in the House that the idea of two countries in the Community with a closed frontier between them is unthinkable.

Arab-Israeli Dispute

Mr. Madel: asked the Lord Privy Seal if he is planning any fresh initiatives in regard to the Arab-Israeli dispute; and if he will make a statement.

Sir Ian Gilmour: The Ten are considering how to carry forward European efforts during our Presidency in the light of Mr. van der Klaauw's report to his colleagues on his consultations with the parties. No decisions have been taken, but we remain committed to working for a comprehensive peace in the Middle East on the basis of the principles of the Venice declaration.

Mr. Madel: With the Israeli general election about to take place, do the Government believe that now would be an appropriate time for the PLO to state clearly that problems with Israel should be discussed peacefully and solved through peaceful negotiation and that informal contacts could then lead to meaningful negotiations?

Sir Ian Gilmour: As my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Oxon (Mr. Hurd) has just made clear, our wish is to see a reciprocal undertaking and, in particular, to persuade the PLO to make the conditional declaration to which my hon. Friend referred.

Mr. Denzil Davies: Does not the Minister agree that what matters most to the Arab countries of the Middle East

is not what the Americans decribe as the "threat from the East", but rather the failure so far to obtain justice for the Palestinian people? When the Minister discusses these matters with the Americans, will he make that clear to them? If it is not made clear, the prospect of any solution in the Middle East will be even remoter than what it appears at present.

Sir Ian Gilmour: I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that, although there is an East-West aspect to most of these subjects, the problem on the ground is what matters. The American Administration are well aware that the Israeli-Arab problem is central to Middle Eastern affairs, and that is certainly our view.

Sir Hugh Fraser: Does not my right hon. Friend agree that the main problem on the ground is the fantastic number of armaments now in the Middle East? Is it not the case that East and West are building a tinder box which could explode at any moment? If the right hon. Member for Llanelli (Mr. Davies) wants a new, worthwhile initiative rather than the Venice initiative, surely this is the time to ask the major Powers to consider Israel's own proposal that there should be a nuclear weapon-free zone in the area and, secondly, that there should be talks among all the major Powers concerned about supplying offensive weapons to the area?

Sir Ian Gilmour: I sympathise with what my right hon. Friend has said, but I cannot agree that securing disarmament in the area is more important than securing peace. The trouble is that the Middle East is already a tinder box, as recent events have shown. A nuclear-free area would be a good thing, and one of the first steps towards achieving that would be that all countries in the Middle East, including Israel, should sign the non-proliferation treaty.

Mr. David Watkins: Is it not now quite clear that the Camp David agreements provide no basis for peace in the Middle East? As it appears to be President Reagan's policy to appease Zionist aggression, and bearing in mind the fact that Israel is the only nuclear power in the Middle East, is it not time for a much stronger European initiative that is independent of American policy?

Sir Ian Gilmour: The achievement of the Camp David agreements in bringing peace between Israel and Egypt was enormous, and I am sure that everyone in the House welcomes that. It is true that there has not been parallel progress in negotiations on the Palestinian part of the agreements, and something more than autonomy may well now be required. Obviously, we shall discuss this matter with our American allies, but I do not think it does any good to criticise them in the way in which the hon. Gentleman has done.

South Africa

Mr. Skinner: asked the Lord Privy Seal if he proposes to take any new initiatives in connection with civil rights for the black community in South Africa.

The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Richard Luce): No, Sir. But we shall continue to take every opportunity to stress to the South African Government our strong conviction that lasting peace in that country depends on rapid progress towards the extension of full political and civil rights to all South Africans of whatever race.

Mr. Skinner: Will the Government go even further and call upon British firms with South African connections—such as British Leyland and Rowntrees, with its subsidiary in South Africa, which doles out large sums of money to the Social Democratic Party and the Liberals—to stop their brutal form of apartheid by paying starvation wages to the black South Africans?

Mr. Luce: The hon. Gentleman takes a remarkably unconstructive attitude towards this problem. It would be healthy if more of us spent more time dwelling on those British companies in South Africa that are trying to take a lead by providing extra opportunities for black people. I wish that the hon. Gentleman would spend more time thinking about that.

Mr. Stokes: Are not these foreign affairs questions, and is it not the main duty of the British Government to look after British interests in the whole of southern Africa rather than to make unproductive and useless comments on other matters?

Mr. Luce: I entirely agree.

Mr. Roy Hughes: Does the Minister recall the tough line taken by the Government over British participation in the Olympic Games? However, when it comes to sporting contacts with South Africa, sporting organisations seem to receive only a mild rebuke, followed by a wink and a nod from the Minister responsible for sport to go ahead. Does the hon. Gentleman appreciate that there is a perpetual invasion of the human rights of the coloured population in South Africa by police armed with guns and tear gas? Is it not time that the Government took an equally tough line in this respect?

Mr. Luce: Our approach over the Olympics and South Africa has been entirely consistent. Whether with regard to the Olympics or under the Gleneagles agreement on South Africa, we have sought to use whatever means we can to persuade sportsmen not to participate. However, we are a democracy and we believe in individual liberty. Consequently, we believe that it is wrong to use Government powers to prevent sportsmen from exercising their rights.

Mr. Teddy Taylor: Does not my hon. Friend agree that attempts to persuade the Government to engage in a boycott of South African sport merely undermines the efforts of those who have achieved a great deal in moving towards multi-racial sport in South Africa, as would have been the case on the football field?

Mr. Luce: It would be churlish, wrong and highly irresponsible not to acknowledge evidence that change has taken place in South Africa. Although that may still be on a modest scale, it is nevertheless happening. While we are fully committed to the Gleneagles agreement, as soon as there is clear evidence of greater integration on the sporting field, that will be the time to review that agreement.

Mr. Denzil Davies: Does not the Minister agree that it is now time for the British and other Western Governments, especially the United States, to take a much tougher line on civil rights in South Africa? Does he not also agree that the greatest danger to peace in southern Africa, the surest magnet for insurrection and subversion in South Africa, and the greatest danger to Britain's commercial and strategic interests in South Africa lie with the evil regime in Pretoria?

Mr. Luce: It is self-evident that it is in the interests of the West to explain to the South African Government that, so long as government is not based on the consent of all the people concerned, there is likely to be instability. Therefore, it is as much in the interests of the South African Government and people that there should be change. That is the task and objective of Britain and other Western Governments.

Detente

Mr. Flannery: asked the Lord Privy Seal if he has any plans to discuss detente with the Soviet Foreign Minister.

Sir Ian Gilmour: We are ready to discuss the international situation with Soviet leaders whenever we think it would be useful.

Mr. Flannery: Does the Minister accept that that is an evasive reply to my question? Does he agree that no subject in the world is more important than detente, which means peace for the whole of mankind? Will the right hon. Gentleman avoid using political prejudice or bias as an excuse for not speaking to the Soviet Foreign Minister? Will he also note that sabre rattling, be it from the British Prime Minister or the American President, is not helpful? Therefore, will he use his good offices to ensure that the Government fully represent the wishes of the British people by discussing detente with the Soviet Foreign Minister, in the interests of peace for all?

Sir Ian Gilmour: We are never evasive in these matters and we certainly do not believe in rattling sabres. Detente is important if it is genuine, and it has been the Government's objective to ensure that detente is reciprocal and mutual rather than one-sided. That policy is supported by the vast majority of British people.

Mr. Squire: Does my right hon. Friend accept that the story of the last 20 or more years shows that, despite the Soviet Union's well-advertised proposals on detente and disarmament, just about every proposal has broken down because Russia has refused to allow adequate inspection and verification.

Sir Ian Gilmour: My hon. Friend is right to suggest that an arms control proposal is worth nothing unless it is fully verifiable. I entirely agree with him.

Mr. Healey: Further to the question asked by the hon. Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Squire), does the right hon. Gentleman agree that SALT I and SALT II included quite adequate provisions for inspection and verification? Has the right hon. Gentleman's attention been drawn to the disturbing evidence given yesterday to the American Congress by the newly nominated head of the arms control and disarmament agency, Mr. Gene Rostow, in which he said that the United States of America should entirely abandon the SALT negotiations? He made it clear that he had not the slightest idea what to put in their place and that he would not have any idea for at least nine months. In the light of what the right hon. Gentleman told the House during our last foreign affairs debate, does he not agree that, if the American Government took that line, it would destroy the very assumption on which the decision to deploy cruise missiles in Europe was taken, 18 months ago?

Sir Ian Gilmour: I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will agree that it is a bit too early to draw


drastic conclusions from what was said yesterday in Congress. Indeed, we have not yet done so. The right hon. Gentleman will know that the American Government have agreed to talks with the Russians about theatre nuclear forces in Europe. That is an important first step. Mr. Haig will be meeting Mr. Gromyko in September. It is too early to go beyond that.

Mr. Healey: Does not the right hon. Gentleman recall that, during our last foreign affairs debate, he told the House that the decision of the NATO countries to modernise their theatre nuclear forces depended on the assumption that SALT II would be ratified? If the whole SALT process is to be abandoned, we must take it that that decision can no longer be considered operative.

Sir Ian Gilmour: I do not agree with the right hon. Gentleman. I did not say "depended". I said that it was "taken in the context". The right hon. Gentleman will be aware that at that stage—before the invasion of Afghanistan—everyone thought that SALT II would be ratified by the Senate. Obviously, we should have preferred it if SALT II had been ratified and if Afghanistan had not been invaded. However, that was not the case. I do not agree that the decision about theatre nuclear forces is made obsolete or nugatory by what happened to the SALT negotiations. That decision is necessary for Europe and I should have expected the right hon. Gentleman to agree with that.

Mr. Chapman: As detente clearly means different things to different countries, does not my right hon. Friend agree that the USSR could take a useful and constructive first step towards our meaning of that word by joining in an agreement to combat international terrorism? Has any progress been made on that subject at the reconvened Madrid conference?

Sir Ian Gilmour: Progress has been slow. My hon. Friend will appreciate that such an international agreement would be difficult. However, there is considerable co-operation among many Western Governments, and that is welcome. My hon. Friend will also be aware that terrorism comes from many quarters.

Minority Groups (Persecution)

Mr. Russell Johnston: asked the Lord Privy Seal what is the Government's policy regarding the receipt of representations from minority groups within a sovereign State or States, alleging persecution or claiming a right to independence, such as the Kurds.

Mr. Hurd: We would normally take note of any representations made to us so that we can decide whether Britain could play a legitimate and helpful role.

Mr. Johnston: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that helpful reply. What does he perceive to be the moral and practical distinction between the Palestinians' demand for self-determination and the similar demand made by the Kurds? Has he made any representations on such matters to the Iraqi Government?

Mr. Hurd: The difference is that the question of self-determination for the Palestinians lies at the heart of a major and festering international dispute. Rightly or wrongly, that is not true of the Kurdish question.

Mr. John MacKay: Has my hon. Friend received many representations on the persecution of the Bahais in

Iran? If so, has he managed to verify the accusations made about such persecutions and, if so, does he propose to take any action either separately on behalf of the Government, or collectively, through our partners in the EEC, or the United Nations?

Mr. Hurd: We have received many representations on this subject from hon. Members. In all these matters, we must judge whether we can do anything that will help those concerned. It must be remembered that there is a widespread—but entirely wrong—impression in Iran that in the past the Bahais have been used for British political purposes. We must take that impression into account when deciding what could usefully be done. We are in touch with our partners among the Ten to weigh up the evidence that my hon. Friend has referred to, and to see whether, together, there is something that we could usefully do.

Mr. Moyle: Have we taken every opportunity, such as the Lord Privy Seal's visit to Turkey, to make representations to the Government there to the effect that most British people heartily dislike the idea of political prisoners and their persecution? Did we ask the Turkish Government whether they intended to set a date for the return of political democracy? It does not lend credibility to the Turkish Government to pretend that they are defending democracy in NATO when they do not practise it at home.

Mr. Hurd: The Turkish Government have given specific undertakings on that matter to my right hon. Friend and in public. We take those assurances seriously and believe that they will be honoured.

Mr. Clinton Davis: Does the Minister realise that the situation affecting the Bahai community in Iran is one of the greatest urgency? Will the hon. Gentleman undertake that the Government's investigations will be carried out with corresponding urgency? Furthermore, what representations, if any, have been made about the oppression of the Kurdish community in Iraq? If none have been made, why not?

Mr. Hurd: Again, we must judge in each case whether anything that we said would prove useful. I pointed out the background in relation to the Bahais. It is a question not so much of investigation but of deciding what can be usefully done. The same point applies to the Kurds in Iraq.

South Atlantic Pact

Mr. Radice: asked the Lord Privy Seal what is the policy of the United Kingdom towards the proposed South Atlantic pact between South Africa, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil; and if he is satisfied that British interests will not be adversely affected.

The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Nicholas Ridley): We have seen press reports on this matter. The proposal was apparently discussed at a private meeting and it would be inappropriate for me to comment. There are no indications that British interests would be adversely affected.

Mr. Radice: Has the Minister seen reports to the effect that security and defence experts from the United States of America, Argentina, Brazil and other South American countries met last month in Buenos Aires to discuss a possible South Atlantic pact? Will the hon. Gentleman make it clear that Britain is hostile to such an ill-conceived


alliance, which would almost certainly do nothing for security in the area and which would alienate the whole of black Africa?

Mr. Ridley: I have seen the same press reports as the hon. Gentleman. Perhaps he has seen the press report from South Africa to the effect that General Malan recently denied that there would be any South African participation in the conference or that there were any negotiations at present with any countries on such issues. We must have more detail before we can form a view.

Sir John Biggs-Davison: Although I share my hon. Friend's ignorance about this proposal would not he agree that the Tropic of Cancer is an obsolete frontier in terms of the maritime defence of the West? Is not there a need for a South Atlantic defence organisation? Would not the Falkland Islands be a suitable headquarters for it?

Mr. Ridley: I think that the point is that the meeting was a private one and not a governmental meeting. We cannot comment on what private individuals may have said in a private meeting. The question of the Falkland Islands is hardly relevant at this stage, because as my hon. Friend knows, there is no question of us taking part in any such defence pact.

Namibia

Sir Patrick Wall: asked the Lord Privy Seal if he will make a statement on the progress of the contact group on Namibia subsequent to the American initiative.

Mr. Luce: The United States Deputy Secretary of State, Mr. William Clark, has recently held discussions with the Governments of South Africa and Zimbabwe and with representatives of the internal parties in Namibia. Consultations among the Western Five are continuing, with a view to developing proposals likely to facilitate a settlement.

Sir Patrick Wall: Has the much more realistic policy of the new American Administration on this issue got the full support of the Government? Has the question of an independent Ovamboland on either side of the Namibian/ Angolan border been considered?

Mr. Ridley: My hon. Friend knows that part of the world well. The American Government's efforts in their discussions in Southern Africa to see whether it is possible to strengthen resolution 435 have the fullest possible support of the British Government and of the other three contact group Western Powers. As regards Ovamboland, I am not in a position to say, but this point might have arisen in the discussions. I expect the group of five to meet shortly to discuss the outcome of the probings in Southern Africa.

Mr. Robert Hughes: Will the Minister please stop using the language of "Nineteen Eighty-four" in speaking about strengthening resolution 435, when the clear intention of the American Government is to weaken resolution 435? Cannot the Government come clean and say how they intend to see resolution 435 applied and what they will do to ensure that the South African Government comply with it?

Mr. Luce: Since the United States Government and the Western group of five have not yet come forward with proposals, I cannot see how the hon. Gentleman supposes

that that will weaken resolution 435. The five Western Foreign Ministers, including the United States Minister, agreed in Rome on 5 May that resolution 435 was a solid basis for progress in Namibia and that we would seek to strengthen the plan to enable us to achieve agreement with all the parties and a peaceful settlement.

Oral Answers to Questions — EUROPEAN COMMUNITY

Foreign Ministers (Special Arrangements)

Mr. Roy Hughes: asked the Lord Privy Seal what formal arrangements exist for European Economic Community Foreign Ministers to meet in special session when an important development in foreign affairs on which European Economic Community States take a common view occurs, such as the Israeli attack in Iraq in the context of the European Economic Community initiative in the Middle East.

Mr. Hurd: The Foreign Minister holding the Presidency can, either on his initiative or at the suggestion of another member, seek his colleagues' agreement to a meeting at short notice.

Mr. Roy Hughes: Does the Minister agree that the recent attack on Iraq was an act of international gangsterism such as we have come to expect from the Israelis? Is it not time that the Government realised that because of the power of the Zionist lobby in America, a settlement cannot be delivered in the Middle East? Will the Government therefore proceed with the European initiative, and, possibly, seek the co-operation of the Soviet Union, too, in bringing about a settlement in that area?

Mr. Hurd: The hon. Gentleman is a little behind events. As soon as the raid took place, there was an immediate discussion both in the International Atomic Energy Authority in Vienna and in the Security Council in New York. The Ten acted closely and successfully together on both those occasions and in the Security Council, contrary to the impression that the hon. Gentleman seeks to create, the United States went along with the strong resolution.

Mr. Latham: Will my hon. Friend remind the House of the date on which Iraq has signed a ceasefire agreement, or armistice with Israel since 1948? Would it not be a good idea if our EEC partners tried to get the two parties together?

Mr. Hurd: Absolutely, and that is why we took the initiative in the Venice Declaration. Iraq has not conducted military operations against Israel for a long time and she has signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

Mr. Home Robertson: Have the European Foreign Ministers received any intimation that Israel is even considering signing the nuclear non-proliferation treaty or that it is prepared to allow international inspection of the nuclear plant at Dimona?

Mr. Hurd: No, Sir. If she took either of those moves than would be large steps forward.

Mr. Churchill: Is my right hon. Friend aware that those who seek to threaten the people of Israel with a second holocaust should not be surprised at the consequences? Will Her Majesty's Government now take


up with the Government of France, as a matter of urgency the recklessness and irresponsibility of that Government in supplying weapons grade uranium to a self-proclaimed belligerent Power? Will the Government urge on President Mitterand that the fuel should be caramelised so that it cannot be used for weapons purposes, which is the avowed aim of the President of Iraq?

Mr. Hurd: The quotations put in the mouth of the President of Iraq by the Israelis in justifying the raid have proved not to be correct. The answer to the second part of my hon. Friend's question is "No, Sir".

Mr. Churchill: Disgraceful.

Mr. Hurd: In reply to the first part of the supplementary question, it is a pity that some Israelis continue to use the tragic memories of the holocaust as a justification for breaking international law.

Joint Policies

Sir Anthony Meyer: asked the Lord Privy Seal if he will seek during the British Presidency of the European Community to strengthen the role of the European Commission in developing joint European policies, particularly in relations with third countries.

Sir Ian Gilmour: Under the treaties the Commission already has a major role in the development of Community policies in the external field under the common commercial policy. It also has a substantial part to play in the implementation of those policies. During the United Kingdom Presidency, we intend to work in close co-operation with the Commission in all areas of Community policy, including the Community's external relations.

Sir Anthony Meyer: Is it not becoming ever clearer that Britain, like the other members of the EEC, is dismally incapable of getting a good bargain out of third countries such as Japan? Yet we persist in acting alone. Would we not get a better bargain for ourselves and the other members of the EEC if we were to entrust to the Commission the role that was originally assigned to it, which was that of negotiating foreign trade agreements?

Sir Ian Gilmour: I largely agree with my hon. Friend, except that I think he will agree that the arrangements we already have with Japan on an industry-by-industry basis should not be given up until there is something equally as strong, if not stronger, to put in its place. I agree that the Community as a body is a stronger negotiating agent than we are by ourselves. Therefore the more the Community can negotiate on a united basis, the better for all concerned.

Mr. Healey: Can the right hon. Gentleman assure the House that when the Prime Minister attends the summit meeting of the Community later this week she will support the view of the other major European countries that the capital of the World Bank should be doubled, and that nothing would do more to help the Third world countries in their present dangerous situation than a concerted European effort to get down interest rates and the exchange rate of the dollar, which is inflicting far greater burdens on the Third world than the increase in oil prices?

Sir Ian Gilmour: As I understand it, the capital of the World Bank has already been doubled and my right hon. Friend would not wish to go back on that decision. I agree

with the right hon. Gentleman that this is important. The Foreign Affairs Council discussed it the other day. I do not think that the European Council would be best employed in spending too much time on United States' financial policies. If need be, that can be discussed at the Ottawa summit.

Mr. Healey: The right hon. Gentleman misunderstood the advice that his hon. Friend was trying to give him. It is true that when I was Chancellor I succeeded in getting the capital of the World Bank doubled. Now, more than two years later, there is a proposal to double it again. Will the right hon. Gentleman ensure that the Prime Minister supports those proposals?

Sir Ian Gilmour: The Prime Minister and the Government are extremely concerned about the North-South problem, but I cannot anticipate what decisions will be made in the European Council.

Mr. Beaumont-Dark: During the British Presidency, will the Government try to achieve a united approach with the Japanese, something that we have not been able to obtain in five years, instead of the Japanese being allowed to import to the destruction of all countries because the EEC can never agree about anything?

Sir Ian Gilmour: I cannot accept my hon. Friend's conclusion. The Community has made progress and under our Presidency we shall endeavour to build on what has been achieved.

Mr. Deakins: Can the Lord Privy Seal confirm that foreign policy is not mentioned in the basic treaties of the European Community, that it is a matter for member States acting individually or collectively, and, in no circumstances is if a matter, as implied by his hon. Friend the Member for Flint, West (Sir A. Meyer), for the European Commission?

Sir Ian Gilmour: I do not think that that was implied by my hon. Friend. Trading policy is a matter for the European Community, and the Community has been successful in it. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will appreciate that considerable progress has been made in European political co-operation, and we welcome such progress.

Enlargement

Mr. Teddy Taylor: asked the Lord Privy Seal if he will clarify the policy of Her Majesty's Government on the enlargement of the European Economic Community.

Sir Ian Gilmour: There is no lack of clarity. We have consistently supported the membership of Portugal and Spain, as we did the accession of Greece.

Mr. Teddy Taylor: Is the Minister aware that at the last count from the Department of Employment, there were 620,000 adult Common Market nationals living in Britain, of whom 410,000 were at work, compared with only 80,000 British nationals working in the EEC? Is it sane or sensible for the Government to sign a treaty that will give an unrestricted right to millions of Spaniards to live, work and enjoy welfare services in the United Kingdom when unemployment has reached such horrific proportions?

Sir Ian Gilmour: That is a matter for the Treaty of Accession that is signed between Spain and Portugal and


the Community. But I am sure that my hon. Friend, with his great interest in these matters, will appreciate, as the previous Labour Government appreciated, the very considerable political value that there is for the West in reinforcing democracy in Spain and encouraging and welcoming Spanish entry into the Community.

Mr. Cryer: Will the Minister accept that there are many reservations by people about the enlargement of the EEC, particularly bearing in mind the effect that enlargement may well have on the textile and clothing industries? Will the Minister assure the House that in any enlargement there will be secure and safe arrangements to prevent disruption and loss of jobs in the British clothing and textile industry, which is, as he knows, already suffering markedly from the present loss of jobs?

Sir Ian Gilmour: I do not think that there are many reservations about that. Even the representatives of the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party, which is not notably European-minded, visited the Foreign Office recently in order to urge Spanish entry. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that there should be safeguards. I have assured him about that before, and I am sure that he is aware of the position.

Mr. Dykes: Will my right hon. Friend also confirm that Spanish entry can be achieved without undermining and endangering the basic interests of the British wine industry and the legal designation of British sherry?

Sir Ian Gilmour: Yes, I am sure that that is true.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: Further to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Mr. Cryer), is it not the case, even today, without the free entry of workers, that the hotel and catering industry has been inundated with Spanish workers, to the detriment of unemployed British workers? Is it not the case that if Spain is entitled to take advantage of the free flow of labour, we shall have hotel and catering workers from Spain flooding the British hotel and catering industry?

Sir Ian Gilmour: The hon. Gentleman cannot have it both ways. He cannot say that it is happening already and that it will be worse in the future. I do not believe that the Spaniards are taking jobs that British workers wish to have.

British Presidency

Mr. Knox: asked the Lord Privy Seal if he is now in a position to state what initiatives he intends to take when he assumes the Presidency of the Council of European Economic Community Ministers.

Sir Ian Gilmour: The Government's general objective when the United Kingdom assumes the Presidency will be to manage business efficiently and to contribute to the development of practical and constructive policies in the Community. Foremost among the issues to be dealt with during our Presidency will be work on the restructuring of the Community budget under the agreement of 30 May 1980. Other priorities will include the accession negotiations with Portugal and Spain and improvements in the working of political co-operation among the Ten.

Mr. Knox: Will my right hon. Friend agree that the setting up of a secretariat attached to the Council of

Ministers will be high on the agenda during the next six months, particularly in view of the importance of greater co-operation on foreign policy within the Community?

Sir Ian Gilmour: As my hon. Friend will be aware, that was suggested by my right hon. and noble Friend in his Hamburg speech, and the Dutch Presidency has been gathering ideas for the implementation of the proposal. These will be discussed by political directors early in our Presidency, and we hope that agreement between member States will be forthcoming so that the improvements can be effected as soon as possible.

Mr. Denzil Davies: Is the Minister aware that many of us do not believe that either he or the Foreign Office has the will or the imagination to propose any reforms in relation to the Common Market? Is it not the case that, with the Foreign Office's vested interest in the status quo and its lack of desire to hurt or offend anybody—and with the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food having apparently sold out to Sir Henry Plumb on the common agricultural policy—we are not likely to get any fundamental reforms either of the CAP or the Common Market budget?

Sir Ian Gilmour: I have expressed to the House several times my bewilderment and surprise that the right hon. Gentleman can go on saying this when he achieved absolutely nothing while he was at the Treasury. He blissfully ignores the fact that we achieved a good deal in the 30 May agreement, and that the Commission today is producing proposals for restructuring, and that these will be discussed during our Presidency.

Mr. Budgen: Will my right hon. Friend comment upon the proposals of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food for a five-year plan for the reform of the CAP? Would it not be advantageous to British farmers if we were instead to have either a 10-year or a 20-year plan for the reform of the CAP?

Sir Ian Gilmour: I would not wish to bandy years with my hon. Friend. As he will be aware, the Commission is producing proposals for restructuring, and presumably proposals on the reform of the CAP today, so perhaps it would be better to postpone discussions on this matter until a later day, if not a later year.

Mr. Heffer: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that when the Labour Party National Executive Committee delegation went to see him about initiatives concerning Spain, one of them was not Spain's entry into the Common Market? We made it clear that that was a matter for Spain, and that we were concerned to defend democracy in Spain. We urged the Government to give every backing to those in Spain who were fighting for democracy, as against those who were trying to overthrow it.

Sir Ian Gilmour: I agree with the hon. Gentleman that that is true. We were concerned to further democracy. But I thought that there was also general agreement that one of the ways of achieving that objective was to facilitate Spanish entry into the Community.

Reform

Mr. Farr: asked the Lord Privy Seal what time scale is planned for the implementation of the European Council's decisions on institutional reform of the European Economic Community.

Sir Ian Gilmour: No deadline has been set, but we intend, during the United Kingdom Presidency, to implement those proposals which are agreed as soon as it is appropriate to do so.

Mr. Farr: Will my right hon. Friend assure the House that the reforms that are needed will be accelerated as soon as possible doming the British Presidency and that we shall aim to draw attention to the absurd situation in which the most costly foods in the world are made available to Communist countries at the taxpayers' expense.

Sir Ian Gilmour: On the first question, I agree with my hon. Friend, and we shall try to speed things up as much as possible. As my hon. Friend knows, these are fundamental matters, and it may take some time.
On the second question, my hon. Friend will know that the Government's position is clear. We are opposed to the export of subsidised food to Russia.

Mr. Spearing: Will the Lord Privy Seal confirm that two major proposals for reform of the CAP and the budget may well be expected during the British Presidency of the Council? Will he undertake to produce the Government's responses to these proposals prior to any debate that ought to take place in the House before those proposals are discussed by representatives on the Council?

Sir Ian Gilmour: As I have already told the House, and as the hon. Gentleman will be aware, the Commission is producing its proposals this afternoon. I do not believe that it would be right for the Government to set out their negotiating position in a White Paper. It is probably not very good negotiating tactics when negotiating with one party, but when negotiating with nine parties and the Commission I am sure that it is not the right way in which to proceed.

Mr. Whitney: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the Government will approach the proposals of the Commission in a positive and constructive manner, and that these proposals are likely to contain many aspects of interest and positive advantage to the United Kingdom, and other factors which were not mentioned or apparently considered by his right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food?

Sir Ian Gilmour: I did not quite follow my hon. Friend's reference to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. My hon. Friend will appreciate that we have only just received the Commission's report, which is a complex and important document. We shall be approaching it in a positive spirit. Obviously, we shall have to study the report very carefully. We greatly appreciate the efforts that the Commission has made.

Mr. Denzil Davies: Is it not the case that the traditional role of the Presidency is to seek compromises—and sometimes rather wet compromises—between all member States, and not to push the interests of the member State that happens to be holding the Presidency? In view of that, does it not follow that having the Presidency of the Commission will mean that we shall be less able to stand up and fight for British interests?

Sir Ian Gilmour: I do not know what conclusions cart be drawn from that question, except that perhaps the right hon. Gentleman thinks that we should have decided not to accept the Presidency. In any event, he will be aware that under his Government the Presidency was not a raging success. We shall hope to do better. But, as I stated in one of my earlier answers, to which the right hon. Gentleman may not have listened, it is the primary job of the Presidency to further Community business.

Foreign Ministers

Mr. Marlow: asked the Lord Privy Seal when next he intends to meet European Economic Community Foreign Ministers to discuss Community affairs.

Sir Ian Gilmour: At the next Foreign Affairs Council on 13 and 14 July.

Mr. Marlow: Will my right hon. Friend take advantage of that opportunity to discuss with his colleagues the disclosure by a Member of the European Assembly that about 100 Members of that organisation are sleeping in their offices and claiming £50 of taxpayers' money?

Sir Ian Gilmour: I really do not think that where Members of the European Parliament spend the night is a matter for me.

Rating (Business Premises Relief)

Mr. John Heddle: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to grant partial relief from rates in the case of industrial and commercial hereditaments; to make further provision in respect of rating relief for industrial and commercial hereditaments in partial beneficial use; to extend the statutory rights of non-domestic ratepayers to pay rates by instalments; and for connected purposes.
It is a timely coincidence that this Bill should be introduced before a major debate in the House on unemployment. Rate rises have gone beyond the fringe. High rates and the threat of supplementary rates this autumn will cause a further loss of jobs in the inner cities and the conurbations.
It is a timely coincidence that the proposed Bill should be introduced the day following the announcement by the West Midlands county council of a rate increase of 14 per cent. this autumn to be backdated to last April. That will send fear into the board rooms and workshops of the West Midlands. It is also a timely coincidence that it should be introduced soon after the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry has published a survey showing that, if the Greater London Council imposes a supplementary rate on the metropolis this autumn, it will cause a further loss of 25,000 jobs in Greater London.
There is no doubt that high rates imposed by spendthrift councils and supplementary rates contemplated by spendthrift councils on the silent majority of industrial and commercial ratepayers will mean further factory closures, further demolition of factories and, particularly, a further loss of jobs.
The industrial and commercial ratepayer is a voice in the wilderness. He has no vote. He has no say. He has no sanction he has no influence over the spending of his money by local authorities.
The Bill seeks to protect the silent majority who this year will have paid £4·4 billion in rates, £1 billion more than the domestic ratepayer. To put that in context, the industrial and commercial ratepayer will be paying what is in effect 85 per cent. of the anticipated yield from corporation tax this year.
This Bill therefore seeks to complement the aims of my right hon. Friend to impose a limit over which no local authority could levy rates on the commercial and industrial ratepayer. It also imposes upon rating authorities the inability to levy rates on vacant business premises. Notwithstanding the fact that the Government, rightly, in the Local Government, Planning and Land Act 1980, reduced that limit from 100 per cent. to 50 per cent., it is the view of my hon. Friends and myself that this right should be abolished. Empty factories make no profits for the owners. They simply involve the owners in the cost of upkeep. They do not provide the owners with value for money. The local authority provides the owners of these premises with no services.
This provision would remove the threat of a repetition of what happened in South Yorkshire recently where owners, frustrated because they were unable to afford void rates, were driven to start demolishing good quality factory premises. The owner said. "If a businessman's rates bill goes up by one-third and then, because of the recession, business is down by one-third, rates become an intolerable and crippling burden".
The Bill proposes mothball relief for business premises only partly occupied during the recession. This provision would exclude from rates those parts of the premises which have been taken out of productive use but which are maintained so that they can be brought back into productive use when the recession finishes and the boom starts again. This provision would be a valuable contribution to preservation of our industrial base.
The Bill also proposes the abolition of the penal and punitive rating surcharge imposed by the Labour Government under the General Rate Act 1967. Rightly again, this Government have frozen that mean and petty provision. I believe that it should be abolished entirely. The Bill further proposes that all business ratepayers should have the right enjoyed by domestic ratepayers and, under the provisions of the Local Government, Planning and Land Act 1980, small business men with premises with a rateable value of under £2,000 in the provinces and under £5,000 in the metropolis should be able to pay their rates by instalments. This would help BL in Birmingham now. It would help British Steel in Sheffield today. I believe that the Government should pay more regard to the cash flow of commerce than to the cash flow of councils.
Most importantly, the Bill proposes the introduction once more of industrial derating as a positive way of protecting industry and commerce from the worst effects of the recession. Agricultural derating was introduced in the 1920s. That concession is still with us. Industrial derating was introduced in 1929 at the depths of a recession similar to that endured today. Seventy-five per cent. industrial derating continued until 1958 when it was reduced to 50 per cent. It was abolished only in 1961. It is significant that industrial derating was introduced in a recession similar to that of today and removed when the boom came in the early 1960s. In the opinion of my hon. Friends and I, commercial rates are a tax on the means of production rather than on the results of production. They are a negation of democracy. They are taxation without representation.
My right hon. Friend is to publish a Green Paper in the autumn on the domestic rating system. He is also to introduce a Bill that will clip the wings of spendthrift councils which fly in the face of democracy and level excessive and punitive rates on the innocent and helpless shoulders of industry and commerce. Unless measures such as those in my proposed Bill are introduced to protect the silent majority, the rate burden will become the straw that breaks the commercial camel's back. More firms will be forced into liquidation. More people will be pursuaded to demolish otherwise good premises to avoid void rates. Yet still more jobs will be lost. It will not be the recession,—or employers,—or employees to blame. The blame will lie with extravagant local councils.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. John Heddle, Sir Hugh Fraser, Sir Graham Page, Mr. Maurice Macmillan, Mr. Michael Grylls, Mr. Tony Durant, Mr. Michael Latham, Mr. John Loveridge, Mr. Sydney Chapman, Mr. Keith Wickenden and Mr. Christopher Murphy.

RATING (BUSINESS PREMISES RELIEF)

Mr. Heddle accordingly presented a Bill to grant partial relief from rates in the case of industrial and commercial hereditaments; to make further provision in respect of rating relief for industrial and commercial hereditaments in partial beneficial use; to extend the statutory rights of non-domestic ratepayers to pay rates by instalments; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 10 July and to be printed. [Bill 166.]

Unemployment

Mr. Speaker: I have selected the amendment tabled by the official Opposition, in the name of the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Foot).
A large number of right hon. and hon. Members will be seeking to catch my eye. I hope that that will be borne in mind.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Your comment will be borne in mind. With the utmost respect, I ask that the Chair should also bear in mind the fact that Privy Councillors on both sides of the House might occasionally give way to Back Benchers.

Mr. Speaker: I am always nervous when an hon. Member with long experience begins by saying "With the utmost respect". So far my fears have been justified. The hon. Gentleman's comments will have been heard by some Privy Councillors who will seek to catch my eye.

The Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. James Prior): I beg to move,
That this House, deeply concerned at the hardship resulting from high levels of unemployment, supports the measures already taken to provide special assistance for those worst affected; and believes that increasing prosperity and employment can only be achieved on a permanent basis by defecting inflation and creating conditions in which British enterprise competes successfully at home and abroad.
The opportunity has been given to the House today to express its deep concern about the tragedy of high unemployment and to consider seriously the problems facing the country and how to tackle them. I wish to make it clear how the Government Benches approach the debate. It is a matter of extreme concern and anxiety. We acknowledge that special responsibility must of course rest with the Government of the day.
This is the right place to debate and express our views. The House is the forum of the nation. It is not the street pavement outside the Department of Employment. [HoN. MEMBERS: "Why not?"] Because the House is the place to debate the matter.

Mr. Bob Cryer: Will the Secretary of State give way?

Mr. Prior: No.

Mr. Cryer: Give way.

Mr. Speaker: Order. It is clear that the Minister is not giving way. He has only just begun.

Mr. Prior: We shall do ourselves no good in the House if we do not recognise certain inescapable facts. Under successive Governments of both parties the peak levels of unemployment have increased in each recession over the past 20 years. The underlying cause is that too many of our firms and industries were and are uncompetitive.
In the last 20 years we have become one of the poorer relations of the developed world. We do not, perhaps, find that shocking, because we have lived off capital invested in the earlier years. As that has aged, our poor performance has become more noticeable. Many of our public facilities, once the pride of our nation, bear grim testimony to that.
We are more vulnerable now to trade from many parts of the world, including the lesser developed countries, and


more vulnerable to the downturns that have accompanied the oil price hike. We forget the effect of the doubling of oil prices in 1979 on our trade and our costs, following the 1973 rise in the price of oil. We have had higher inflation and lower productivity than our competitors.
We have devalued, allowing the pound to float down, but we never accepted the discipline that that meant for our prospects and our standards. Inflation continued to sap our strength, and output was stagnant. Even at the peak of the last economic cycle, in 1979, we had not got back to the manufacturing output levels of 1973.
Our unit labour costs priced us out of markets at home and overseas. When that happens one is priced out of jobs as well. Nobody can deny the facts. No one can dodge the fact that our unit labour costs between 1975 and 1980 rose by 88 per cent. when the unit labour costs in France rose by 45 per cent., in America by 36 per cent., in Germany by 17 per cent. and in Japan by zero. That is perhaps the crucial factor explaining why our unemployment is higher than that of any competitor nations.

Mr. Nigel Spearing: There has been question and debate about the definition of unit labour costs as distinct from wages costs. Can the Secretary of State define unit labour costs so that we can be sure that he is comparing like with like?

Mr. Prior: I do not wish to go into a definition of that today. That is not the point. The point is that one is comparing on the same basis Britain's performance with that of America and other countries. The comparisons are on exactly the same basis. One can argue about that, but the facts stare one in the face. Tha facts are obvious. That was the problem for the last Government, for the Government before that, and for the Governments of the last 20 years. We cannot get away from that.
In the 15 years to 1979 the rate of return on capital employed in manufacturing industry fell by over two-thirds. While others invested in growth industries we simply failed to do so. It is inescapable that a combination of these factors led us to the serious position that we face today. There is no easy or painless remedy for our problems. Many more people realise that than Opposition Members sometimes admit.
I was talking to two steel workers last Saturday afternoon. [HON. MEMBERS: "Wait for it."] The men were from Llanwern. They had lost their jobs in the last 18 months. I was commiserating with them. At the same time I was praising the steel industry at Llanwern for the increase in productivity that has resulted.
I asked the men what had happened at Llanwern. They said "We could all see it coming. It was partly bad management—too many chiefs—and partly nationalisation". They said that the steelworks were never the same after nationalisation. The same applies to Ebbw Vale. The men went on to say that their attitudes were also part of the problem. I regard that as a fair assessment by working people who have lost their jobs. the two steel men were representing feelings in British industry as a whole.

Mr. Robert Kilroy-Silk: Whatever the various causes of unemployment, the Secretary of State should not deny that a large part of the responsibility for 20·2 per cent. of my constituents being unemployed lies at the feet of the Government and their economic policies.

The Secretary of State voted for those policies. He sustains and supports them however much he pretends otherwise when he goes round the country and however many nods and winks he gives to pretend that he does not support them. When will he stop trying to trade both ways? When will he do the honourable thing and resign?

Mr. Prior: I am not certain where the constituency of the hon. Member for Ormskirk (Mr. Kilroy-Silk) starts or ends. I have in my constituency an extremely good firm—Birds Eye Foods Limited—with a marvellous work record. It could have expanded in my constituency or in that of the hon. Gentleman—or close to his constituency; I am not quite certain. The firm decided to expand in his area, because it could get a regional grant there. This happened about three or four years ago. My constituents asked me "Why should that firm expand somewhere else where there is a shocking industrial record, when we have a good record?" The company went ahead and expanded in the hon. Gentleman's area, but it has not had good industrial relations.
There are always any number of reasons for bad industrial relations—they are not always the fault of the work force—and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not try to put all the blame on the Government for what happened in his constituency. He would be totally wrong to do so.
This is the situation that we are left with today. It goes a long way to explain why unemployment more than doubled between 1974 and 1979, and has doubled again since then. What has happened is no surprise when one realises that it was as long ago as 1976 that a group of economists reported to a Labour Party committee that by 1980 the number of jobless would reach 2,500,000. It was only in the Budget before that that the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) spoke in terms of a figure of 3 per cent.—700,000—by 1979. The Labour Government of the day knew perfectly well that the uncompetitive state of British industry was likely to lead to unemployment figures far higher than ever before.

Mr. Cryer: If all that was known and if the thesis of the Secretary of State is that the decline in the British economy was well understood by the Conservative Party, why did that party, with his consent and support, embark on a highly expensive poster campaign, led by Saatchi and Saatchi, with the slogan "Labour's not working"? Surely that implies that the Conservatives intended to do better, and put people to work? Yet in fact they have put over 1 million people on the dole.

Mr. Prior: It is true to say that Labour policies were not working. I hope to demonstrate during the course of my speech that they would not work next time round, either. Over the years people have witnessed Governments diverted from their course, only for the problems to end up far worse and far more intractable later.
None of what I have said detracts from our duty to help in every possible way those who are hardest hit by unemployment. The extra help that we seek to provide by special measures has to be weighed against the permanent jobs that could be created if the balance between public and private expenditure were better. I wish to tell the House about those special measures, and something about our plans, in the knowledge that no plans on this issue can remain static or fixed for long. We are helping, through


a series of training and temporary work, and also by job support measures. The sum total is 900,000-odd people now.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: They are not real jobs.

Mr. Prior: The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) says that they are not real jobs. No, they are not real jobs. Nor were they when the hon. Gentleman was in office.

Mr. Skinner: Me in office?

Mr. Prior: The hon. Gentleman will never be in office unless the right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) takes over the Labour Party. Then he may be in office.

Mr. Skinner: No.

Mr. Prior: If that prospect does not put everyone off, it ought to.
At the moment the youth opportunities programme supplies 450,000 places for young people—one-quarter more than last year and four times as many as in 1978–79. Last year we planned a figure of 250,000. It operated at about 330,000. This year it will operate at about 450,000. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said yesterday, we have improved the undertakings and guarantees so that young people who leave school this summer will be offered a place in a scheme by Christmas. If they have been unemployed for three months, they will be offered another place within three months.

Mr. Derek Foster: rose—

Mr. Prior: I shall give way to the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Foster) when I come to the end of this passage in my speech.
That improvement in the undertakings that we have given will, I think, enable vast numbers of young people this summer to get jobs who otherwise would not receive any help. In May alone, this year, almost double the number of people were on a youth opportunities programme compared with May of last year. As my right hon. Friend made clear, if we need to increase expenditure to ensure that our undertakings are carried out, we shall do so.
Our long-term aim—I say this to many of my hon. Friends who have put forward helpful and constructive schemes for helping young people to get jobs at this difficult time—is to ensure that all 16 and 17-year-olds either remain at school or in further education, get a job in which they receive apprenticeship training or a unified vocational preparation scheme, or—if they become unemployed because there is no work—are offered a scheme along the lines of the youth opportunities programme, not necessarily fixed to that but offered to them at a suitable time when they leave school or further education. In that way, they would not have to go on the dole or become unemployed.
When we can move towards that that will be the right time to stop paying supplementary benefit to young people who at present have it because there is no job for them. The sooner we can move towards that, the better it will be for all young people. Moreover, it will be a step forward at a time of adversity to move towards far more comprehensive training schemes than this country has ever known. At present 40 per cent. of our young people leave

school without any further training. That is a disgrace in a modern society, and it is something that we should put right through the youth opportunities programme at this particularly difficult time.

Mr. Skinner: When?

Mr. Prior: We cannot do it this year. We shall do it as soon as we possibly can, by finding the resources and also the places.

Mr. Foster: If the Secretary of State is to fulfil his guarantees he will have to make good a shortfall of 110,000 places in the YOP. Will he give a categorical assurance that the necessary money to expand the programme will be found? When does he intend that all 16 and 17-year-olds will get the vocational training that he promised in November last year?

Mr. Prior: I have been talking about that for the past quarter of an hour. I will not give such undertakings today, but I have already given the undertaking that in so far as it will be necessary to expand the programme in order to fulfil our undertakings we will, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister undertook yesterday, ensure the necessary expansion. If an extra 100,000 places are necessary in order to fulfil our undertaking we shall have to find the necessary resources.
One of the problems with young workers and growing unemployment among young people is that over the past few years young workers have started to price themselves out of jobs. There is no doubt about that. The hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Golding) has mentioned the matter in the House on a number of occasions. Our rates of pay for young people, particularly young apprentices but also others, are far higher than in countries like Germany, where there is no problem about the training of young people.
I need to get home to the country the fact that if we are to get more young people into apprenticeships we must keep down the cost of those apprenticeships. In addition, if the YOP is to develop as we wish, with a far higher element of training, the payment should become more an allowance for training than a low payment for another job, as it has tended to become.

Mr. John Golding: I was quietly minding my own business when the right hon. Gentleman referred to me. Can he tell the House when I made the statement that he attributed to me?
I have not talked about apprentice rates, or compared British rates with those overseas. I have talked about the problems of unskilled young workers and changes in relativities. The Secretary of State does us both a disservice by making such statements.

Mr. Prior: I am sorry if I gave the impression that the hon. Gentleman had talked about apprenticeships. He has certainly talked about unskilled young people generally, and he has made valuable points. I accept the hon. Gentleman's explanation and I apologise if I stepped over the mark in saying that he was talking about apprenticeships as well.
I am conscious that although we have given youth unemployment top priority there are also problems among the older and the long-term unemployed. That is why we have expanded the community enterprise programme,


developed the temporary short-time working compensation scheme on a large scale, and continued the job release scheme.
All those schemes will be a great aid in the next year or two in helping young people who would otherwise be unemployed to obtain jobs. If, at the same time, we can do more to help, through early retirement and job release schemes, those near the end of their active careers, we shall certainly try to do so.

Mr. John Townend: Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the major causes of excessive wage rates for young people are the wages councils, some of which stipulate wages of £59 a week for 19-year-old workers? Will the Government undertake to take some action in that area?

Mr. Prior: We have looked seriously at that matter. Our view is that we must keep wages councils, but the lowering of the age of majority to 18 has resulted in a considerable rise in the wages of young people, particularly in wages council industries.

Dr. Oonagh McDonald: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Prior: No. Let me get on for a bit. We have written to the chairmen of wages councils to tell them that we hope that they will have special regard to the problem of young people getting jobs and will therefore take account of the fact that wage rates for young people in the wages councils sector have risen in recent years.
Another part of our strategy consists of the positive employment measures that we have taken. We have given help to many companies to try to keep them going at a difficult time. Labour Members used to boast of the jobs that aid had saved in British Leyland and other organisations. They used to claim that the Labour Government's aid to BL alone had saved 500,000 jobs.
The problem that we face is of a different dimension. More money has to be spent and fewer jobs are being saved, but modernisation and restructuring are taking place. We are supporting industries through a period of change and adjustment. It should have been done before. Difficult decisions were too often shirked, particularly by the previous Government. Labour Members know that only too well. A number of great industries are a drain on our resources when they ought to be contributors to the national Exchequer.
At a time when our problems are a mixture of structure, history and recession, specific aid is likely to be more valuable than any attempt at an old-style general reflation. That is why we have concentrated on a series of specific employment measures, combined with increased aid for some industries in transition, including steel and British Leyland, and some technologically based industries, such as ICL and British Telecom. In addition, through the appointment of my hon. Friend the Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Baker) as Minister for Industry and Information Technology, we have made certain that every secondary school has the opportunity to install a minicomputer.
Earlier today my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield and Tamworth (Mr. Heddle) introduced a Bill dealing with rates. I should just like to tell Labour Members—

Mr. David Winnick: Here comes another excuse.

Mr. Prior: If Labour Members really want to help over jobs and to keep unemployment down they will use their influence with Labour councils that are putting up rates and driving industries out of areas that badly need additional employment.
That is particularly true—

Mr. Skinner: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Prior: No.

Mr. Skinner: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Speaker: Order. The Minister must be allowed to proceed. He has made it clear that he is not giving way.

Mr. Prior: That is particularly true—

Mr. Skinner: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way now?

Mr. Speaker: Order. Hon. Members must not jump up immediately after I have made such a statement. If they do, coherent debate will be impossible.

Mr. Prior: I was saying that that is particularly true of small businesses. We have to rely more on those than perhaps anywhere else for the improvement in our employment position. Already, as my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Industry—the hon. Member for Norfolk, South (Mr. MacGregor)—has announced, we have introduced 50 different measures in the past two years designed to help new and small businesses. At the moment, there is an immense demand for small factory units. We are doing all that we can to meet that increased demand. That is another point at which we are doing all that we can, in difficult circumstances, to try to improve the unemployment situation.

Mr. Skinner: Will the Secretary of State admit that the problem of rate increases in recent years, especially in the past two years, has been a direct result of the amount of grants from central Government and that the second highest rate that was inflicted on any of the London boroughs in this financial year was on the Royal borough of Kensington and Chelsea, which is Tory controlled? Is it not a fact that in his speech the Secretary of State is no longer a wet, but just a dishcloth for the Prime Minister?

Mr. Prior: Having had the courtesy to give way to the hon. Gentleman, I should have learnt by now what a waste of time it would be.
The Government do not believe that any general reflation would have the desired effect on unemployment levels. When the Opposition put that forward, as I suspect they will this afternoon, I hope that they will remember what happened to them in the year before the last election. Even after the economy was reflated by £3½ billion in 1977–78 and 1978–79, unemployment fell by only 150,000. That compared with the Opposition's forecast figure of 700,000 by 1979. That shows that a general reflation of the economy in the old style will not work. That figure was at the top of the world economic cycle before the second increase in the price of oil and before the bills for public sector pay started to come in, as they did in the spring of 1979.

Mr. Robert C. Brown: rose—

Mr. Prior: I shall not give way again. I have given way many times.
I hope that when the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Varley) speaks he will tell us how, if his Party wins the election next time, things will be different from what they were last time. Unlike his radio performance on Tuesday morning, when he pleaded lack of time on being asked what he would do, this afternoon he will have plenty of time to display his case. If he sets out a massive array of measures that the Opposition would take and that will take him a long time to display, I hope he will bear in mind the wise words of his former Prime Minister. I have no compunction in reminding the House of them, because his words still do not seem to have registered with the Opposition. He said:
We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists.
The trouble was that in 1978 he forgot his own wise words, but that is another matter.
The right hon. Member for Heywood and Royton (Mr. Barnett) said in 1978:
The major way one gets unemployment down—and regrettably it is not going to come down in the way we originally hoped—is…by a substantial improvement in our industrial performance as a nation".
Although that was said in 1978, it is still true today. That is the message that we have to get across. It is the message that was ignored during the late 1970s, with catastrophic effects. The competitiveness of British industry declined by 50 per cent. between 1975 and 1980. The single most important underlying cause was the steep rise in unit labour costs. We trailed behind other countries on productivity, but we still kept on paying ourselves as though we were up with the best of them.
Any speech from the Opposition Benches, any speech from a trade union leader, or any speech from an industrialist that does not recognise that fact and go on to point out the inescapable consequence, that we must hold down pay settlements if we are to give ourselves a chance of beating unemployment, is refusing to face reality.
There was a good example of not facing reality yesterday both in the Transport and General Workers Union conference and in the performance of the Leader of the Opposition in front of it. It is not facing the facts of economic life on which all our future prospects of employment depend. Some hard lessons have been learnt already in the private sector. Many people have forgone a pay rise to keep their jobs but I do not yet believe that the message is clearly understood in the public sector. as we emerge from the recession—[HON. MEMBERS: "When?"] I hope that the Opposition will join with me in wishing that to be as soon as possible.
As we emerge from the recession, those responsible for negotiating on pay must ask themselves whether what they are claiming or what they are prepared to concede will secure jobs in their firms or industries. They must ask themselves what effect a certain pay rise will have on the price of their products. What will be the effect on costs and jobs in the industries that they supply? They must ask themselves what competitor nations are paying, and how they plan to compete against Germany, where settlements this year have been 5 per cent., or against Japan, where they are around 7½ per cent.
Therefore, when the Opposition ask when we will come out of the recession, I can answer that we shall come out of it a hell of a lot quicker if we keep down our pay

settlements, and if they do all they can to see that that happens. If we are going to get to grips with unemployment, we have to pay ourselves what is justified by our performance. Unless we do so we shall continue to price ourselves out of markets both at home and abroad.
At the same time, there are a number of hopeful signs. The rate of increase in unemployment has slowed down considerably in the last few months. The placement of school leavers in schemes this summer is double that of a year ago. There is much more realism and understanding on the shop floor about the need to compete than there has been for many a year. Industrial relations problems are at a low point. Restrictive practices and demarcation have been thrown out in order to achieve better results. Management is able to concentrate much more on the product and less on dealing with shop floor problems.
Of course, no one likes standing at the Dispatch Box with the present level of unemployment. Deplorable and damaging the total certainly is. However, there is a great deal that we are doing, in direct aid of over £1 billion and indirect aid to industry of many times that amount. Those are not the acts of an uncaring or dogmatic Government; they are designed to keep a proper balance and perspective between short-term essential needs and long-term strategy.
As Secretary of State for Employment I feel a deep and special responsibility for representing the views of the unemployed. However, I must tell hon. Members that I have confidence that over the next two years we can begin to lift the gloom and despondency of high unemployment without sacrificing the long-term health and prosperity of our people.
That is the real challenge that the House must face—how we can do that without going back to the bad old ways all over again. That is what Governments have failed to do. That is what I suspect the Opposition are about to try to do this afternoon. That is why I ask for the support of my hon. Friends now.

Mr. Eric G. Varley: I beg to move to leave out from "House" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
condemns Her Majesty's Government for pursuing economic policies which have destroyed great sections of British industry and spread mass unemployed on a scale unprecedented in the last fifty years.
The Secretary of State is right to say that we are debating the most serious subject that is afflicting the nation today. His speech convinced no one on this side of the House. I do not think that it necessarily convinced many hon. Members on the Conservative side of the House either. It obviously did not convince the right hon. Gentleman, because he was not convincing when he spoke. He had nothing new to say. It was part departmental brief, part pious platitude and part bluster.
The right hon. Gentleman blustered about the level of rates. He should have a word with his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, because 70 per cent. of the councils on his list are Conservative controlled. If the right hon. Gentleman hoped to make an impression on the House, he was disappointed. If he hoped to make an impression on the Prime Minister, I must tell him that I looked at her face when he was speaking and she appeared to disapprove of him as much then as she did when he rose to speak.
Of course, the Prime Minister does not have much to boast about either. When she made her notorious preemptive strike at the Confederation of British Industry dinner last week, she told her audience that she wanted to take stock of the position as we approached the mid-term of this Parliament. It is instructive to look back at that day in May 1979 when the Prime Minister entered No. 10 Downing Street, clutching the collected quotations of St. Francis.
Let us look back at an unbiased source—the Financial Statement and Budget Report 1979–80, issued to Parliament by the present Financial Secretary to the Treasury. It said:
Unemployment fell slowly but steadily during the course of 1978. In December, United Kingdom unemployment (excluding school leavers under 18) was about 100,000 below the peak level of September 1977. Unemployment increased in the early months of 1979, but the rise seems to have been due to a combination of severe winter weather and industrial disruptions. By May, unemployment had fallen back to a level about 10,000 lower than in December.
In the 12 months to December 1978, United Kingdom employment increased by around 190,000, a rise of just over ¾ per cent.
On the question of investment, the right hon. Gentleman said:
Total investment for use by manufacturing industry, including capital expenditure by non-manufacturing companies on assets for leasing to manufacturers, probably rose by about 9 per cent. last year.
That was the Labour year. That was not a bad inheritance, but in two years the Government managed to wreck it all.
The Secretary of State did not give any figures in his speech. I shall do so. Manufacturing investment fell by a colossal 18 per cent. in the first full year of the Government. All investment, including manufacturing, local government, Government and nationalised industries, was down by 12 per cent. during the same period. Since the Government came to power industrial production is down by 13·2 per cent., and manufacturing industry production down by a massive 17 per cent.
Unemployment has now risen in 17 of the 25 months during which the Government have been in office. It has risen evey month since June last year. It has not fallen below 1½ million since April 1980, has not fallen below 2 million since August 1980, and has been above 2½ million since April of this year. It is now more than double the level that the Prime Minister inherited when she took office.
One worker in every nine is now out of a job. Every region has been hit. In the South-East, one in every 14 is out of work, in East Anglia one in every 12, in the South-West one in every 11, in the East Midlands one in 11, in Yorkshire and Humberside one in nine, in Scotland one in eight and the West Midlands one in eight.
It is an extraordinary achievement of the Government that they have managed to bring up unemployment in the once prosperous West Midlands to parity with Scotland. Yet the Secretary of State for Industry, during Question Time on Monday, said that he could not agree that in the West Midlands conditions were as negative as in some other regions. He knew the unemployment figures when he spoke from the Dispatch Box. They had not been revealed, but he knew them. Yet he deliberately chose to deceive the House.
Male unemployment in the West Midlands is even higher than in Scotland, with one in every seven unemployed. Although the West Midlands is suffering shamefully from the activities of the Government, that is not the end of the sorry catalogue. Unemployment in the North-West stands at one in eight. In Wales it is one in seven. In the Northern region overall it is one in seven, and one male in every six is in the dole queue.
Those grim figures exclude school leavers. Although the Government's treatment of the country region by region is disgraceful, although certain industries such as metal manufacture, textiles, clothing, footwear, mechanical engineering, vehicles, shipbuilding and construction are suffering great hardship, the cruellest impact of the Government's unemployment policies is felt by the youngsters. They are the most eager, but at the same time the most vulnerable, group.
The Manpower Services Commission has forecast that this autumn 50 per cent. of youngsters under 18 will be out of a job. That is a wonderful achievement about which the Prime Minister can boast when she next attends a Confederation of British Industry dinner. Nearly half of those under 18 will be out of work. The responsibility is the Prime Minister's. She is utterly determined to keep the Government on the course of economic disaster.
There is a growing problem of redundancies among apprentices. Last year, redundancies overall were nearly three times the average for the previous four years. Those jobs are lost altogether. Even those lucky enough to have a job cannot rely on full-time employment. By the end of last year short-time working was 10 times as common as a year earlier. Those are the achievements of the Government. Those are the achievements that the Prime Minister told the CBI dinner were the sharpest economic change for a generation.
What action are the Government taking to put matters right? They blather about what they intend to do for small businesses. It is true that under the Government there are a few additional small businesses. The trouble is that when the Government came to power they used to be large businesses. One achievement of the Government is the large number of bankruptcies and liquidations which are now running at double the rate at which they were running when the Government took office. The most ominous information came from the Secretary of State for Industry only this week when, in his inspiring and innocent way, he told the House that bankruptcy increases appeared to have peaked.
The Secretary of State for Industry has been talkative recently. Last week he paid an enterprising visit to Barnsley. It is safe to say that they had never seen anything like him before. He told the baffled citizens of Barnsley that money was running out of the ears of pension funds and insurance companies. He said that there had never been so much money available in Britain. The trouble is that the money is being used not to finance investment, but to finance unemployment.
The Secretary of State for Industry is making his contribution to the great debate about unemployment, but what is the Secretary of State for Employment doing? It is his job to promote employment. Before he took office he gave the impression—he tried to deny this—that dealing with unemployment would be easy. When he took office he gave an interview to a publication entitled Jobs Weekly. No doubt it has been renamed Unemployment Daily. He was asked the following question:


Firstly, Mr. Prior, do you anticipate a reduction in the numbers of unemployed under the next Conservative government?
The right hon. Gentleman replied:
Well, I would hope so… We would certainly set out to bring about a reduction in the numbers of unemployed.
The right hon. Gentleman sang a different tune this afternoon and a very different tune when he was interviewed on the radio yesterday. We heard him speak during yesterday's edition of the BBC's "PM" programme. We seem to be listening to each other on the radio. He said:
We have always known that unemployment was going to continue to rise.
The right hon. Gentleman has moved from
We would certainly set out to bring about a reduction in the numbers of unemployed.
to
We have always known that unemployment was going to continue to rise.
In two years we have seen a Rake's Progress. What incompetence, and what deceit!

Mr. Nigel Forman: In the interests of fair comparisons, and so that both sides of the House may have a true idea of the Opposition's policies to rectify the serious problems before us, will the right hon. Gentleman tell us how many jobs would be lost if a future Labour Government were ever to come to power committed both to unilateral disarmament and to withdrawal from the EEC, which would damage jobs greatly in our defence-related industries and exporting industries?

Mr. Varley: I might have a few words to say about defence policy in a moment. The European Community has not been all that it was made out to be. The hon. Gentleman and many of his hon. Friends know that. I am directing my attention to the Secretary of State for Employment. He is the chap who is charged with the responsibility. He has the seals of office as Secretary of State for Employment.
The right hon. Gentleman seems to be helpless. He seems unable to do anything. He appears to have given up altogether. Under the previous Labour Government, the youth opportunities programme was regarded as a useful transition between school leaving and a permanent job. When it was introduced by my right hon. Friends the Leader of the Opposition, the Member for Barrow-in-Furness (Mr. Booth) and the Member for Doncaster (Mr. Walker), and my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Golding), it was designed to assist only one in eight school leavers. Employment prospects for young people have become so catastrophic under this Government that the YOP will have to assist one in two youngsters.
The Opposition will continue to support the programme. It is the only chance that some young people will have of any work experience. However, this once useful programme is being used to distort and rig the unemployment figures. That is what will happen later this year. Yesterday, the right hon. Gentleman was predicting that there would be 3 million unemployed. If that does not come about—I hope it does not—it will be because of the implementation of the youth opportunities programme. The youngsters who can participate in it will be removed from the unemployment figures and will appear on the back of a Department of Employment press notice.
The only other action that the right hon. Gentleman can think of is more anti-trade union legislation. To be fair to

him, he is probably not thinking of further legislation of that sort. I do not think that he wants it. I think that the Prime Minister is forcing it upon him. I understand that she is using the head of a No. 10 policy unit to stir up employers' associations against her own Secretary of State. She probably does not know about that, but she should make inquiries. If it is happening, she should put a stop to it. At some stage she should support her right hon. Friend.
The right hon. Lady was at it again yesterday. She was promising such legislation in the next Session. We thought that she made it an inflexible rule never to do anything that was done by the right hon. Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath) when he was Prime Minister. There was evidence of last week when she paid up £550 million to set the seal on her humiliating capitulation to the National Union of Mineworkers. However, yet another bout of anti-trade union legislation will be to revisit the scene of her Conservative predecessor's crime.
The right hon. Lady's legislation will be equally ineffectual. Again, it will be an irrelevant diversion. It will succeed only in further alienating the trade unions when she should be seeking their co-operation. In the latter stages of his premiership the right hon. Member for Sidcup was positively seeking the co-operation of the trade union movement, but the right hon. Lady will not do that.
I am angered by the strident and bellicose way in which the right hon. Lady goes about the task of representing this nation at home and abroad. She ways that she is prepared to confront anybody. She is prepared to confront the Soviet Union and the trade unions. The trouble is that she cannot tell the difference between them.

Mr. Tim Renton: rose—

Mr. Varley: No, I will not give way now.
If the right hon. Lady wishes to intervene to tell us that she will not introduce further trade union legislation, I shall give way to her.

Mr. Prior: Does the right hon. Gentleman approve of the activities of the Sandwell district council in respect of the closed shop?

Mr. Varley: I take that as confirmation that we shall have anti-trade union legislation next Session. That is what will happen. However, the right hon. Gentleman has been saying for the past two years that it is necessary to proceed carefully and to win the support and consent of the trade union movement. He has now been bulldozed into taking anti-trade union action.
Such activity as we see from the Government either has nothing to do with reducing unemployment or is designed to increase unemployment. We need programmes that will provide Britain with much-needed assets and at the same time provide jobs where they do not now exist. Instead of the derisory announcement this week by the Secretary of State for Transport of a tentative programme for railway electrification, a programme which The Guardian described as a
pathetic way to run a railroad",
we need a major programme of modernisation for our deteriorating railway system. If the right hon. Gentleman and the right hon. Lady choose to bleat about where the money will come from, the commuters who daily travel to Liverpool Street, Waterloo and Victoria in squalid and overcrowded conditions would much prefer their taxes to be used to provide a decent and acceptable journey to work


instead of to finance unemployment. Similarly, tens of thousands of jobs could be created by a major programme of council house building.
As the right hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King), the Minister for Local Government and Environmental Services, knows, there are 1,200,000 on council house waiting lists. I have no doubt that they would prefer their taxes to be used to give them a chance of a decent home rather than to finance the highest ever recorded level of unemployment among construction workers. There are 300,000 construction and building workers out of a job. The trouble with the Government is that their overall economic policies are not only damaging but destroying jobs.
We are likely to be told tomorrow by the Secretary of State for Defence that billions of pounds will be preempted by the unnecessary and wasteful Trident project. That will result in the loss of thousands of jobs in naval shipyards in Southampton, Tyneside and the lower Clyde. The Secretary of State for Employment is muttering but he has a shipyard in his constituency. I wonder what his constituents are thinking. If the Labour Government had remained in power, his shipyard workers would be constructing hydrographic survey vessels in Lowestoft. We hear nothing of that from the Secretary of State.
We need specific projects to create jobs, and the Government must reverse the direction of their economic policy. They must desist from sacrificing the country's workers on the altar of the public sector borrowing requirement. It is an indicator, but by itself it is completely unreliable. That was discovered a few weeks ago when the Treasury noticed an error in the PSBR of £1 billion.
The Government are steering the British economy to disaster. We need a change of economic direction which will offer encouragement to investors. Instead, all we get from the Government is cut, cut and cut again. We need to increase Government spending to encourage specific economic activity. If Government supporters say that such an increase in public spending will be inflationary, our reply is that nothing can be more inflationary and more wasteful than the £15,000 million a year that the Government are spending to finance the increased unemployment that they have created since they came to office.
We can expect no promise of positive action from the Prime Minister when she winds up the debate. It was all very different before she came to office. As Leader of the Opposition in 1979 she said:
we have to break through the prosperity barrier in manufacturing industry.
She has not broken through the prosperity barrier, but she has certainly broken manufacturing industry. She had more to say:
Perhaps the most debilitating and damaging aspect of the Government's policy to increase State power is that the supporters of the Government positively believe in taking a higher proportion of the national income away from the taxpayer".—[Official Report,28 March 1979; Vol 965, c. 467.]
The ironic fact is that the Conservative Government are taking a higher proportion of the national income in taxation than was being taken when she made that vainglorious statement. That was acknowledged in the timid part of the right hon. Lady's speech to the Confederation of British Industry last week when she said:

Income tax, when we came into office, was seriously damaging incentives and risk-taking. We have made a start at changing all that.
She has made a start, but only for the very rich. Everyone else is paying more tax to finance unemployment.
The Prime Minister does not have the policies or the determination; she does not have the interest to conquer the inexorable rise in unemployment. She is anxious about the Secretary of State's attitude to victories. She arranges for the press to be briefed so assiduously that it seems that the only victory she wants is victorynot over mounting unemployment, but over the rest of her Cabinet.
Yesterday, the right hon. Lady repudiated the Secretary of State for Employment by rejecting the unemployment forecast just after the Secretary of State on the BBC "World at One" programme had forecast 3 million unemployed, and again just before he gave that forecast on the "PM" programme.
I must warn the Prime Minister that the Secretary of State for Employment is not alone. Other Ministers, too, defied her ruling. The Secretary of State for Industry said in the House:
The level of unemployment will continue to increase while more people come on to the register because they are unemployed than there are people leaving the register."—[Official Report, 22 June 1981; Vol. 7, c. 15.]
Then there was that famous Cabinet meeting last Wednesday which the Prime Minister pre-empted the previous night and which she tidied up afterwards. This is how the Sunday Telegraph described it:
She gave strict instructions to Cabinet Ministers that there were to be no leaks on the outcome of the special meeting and she forebade discussions even with junior Ministers and Parliamentary Private Secretaries because she wanted to manage the presentation of it through Downing Street.
That is a fairly stern warning. It was so intimidating that the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food found it safe to speak his mind only when he had put the 3,000 miles of the Atlantic Ocean between himself and the Prime Minister. Only then did he dare to defy the Prime Minister's edict. What the Minister of Agriculture dared to say only from the political asylum of the United States is being said on every shop floor and in every board room throughout Britain. If the Prime Minister does not know it already, it will be reported to her when her local bus driver returns from his mystery tour to Warrington with his deposit lost.
The British people have had enough of these policies and of the Conservative Government. They want a Government determined to fight unemployment, a Government ready to uphold human dignity, a Government who care about the despair that is felt by hundreds of thousands of young people to whom this incompetent Government can offer no constructive future, and to whom the Prime Minister says, "We can find no useful place in society for you now." If the Government refuse to produce the necessary policies they should make room for those of us who can.

Mr. Norman St. John-Stevas: I hope that the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Varley) will forgive me if I do not follow him on to the party political treadmill on which he was mounted, nor into the sphere of swapped broadcasting reminiscences, but perhaps I may make what I call a liturgical point on his reference to the prayer of St. Francis. That prayer, whoever wrote it, was not written by St. Francis. It first


appeared, not in thirteenth century Italy but in nineteenth century France. It was first attributed in the twentieth century by Mowbrays, a good Anglican firm, to St. Francis in a burst of what I hope was ecumenical as well as commercial zeal. What underlines those lines is, however, relevant to our discussion today.
The opportunity to work, to contribute by the fruits of one's labour to the support of oneself and one's family, to seek to enrich the community by the exercise of one's God-given talents, is essential to the dignity of every human being. Every man and woman who is denied that opportunity is diminished and devalued. Today we know that 2,600,000 of our fellow citizens, through no fault or responsibility of their own, through circumstances which they cannot influence nor control, are unable to obtain work, some for long periods and some semi-permanently. That knowledge should stir the conscience of the nation, if we are worthy to be called a nation.
This House is representative of the nation, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said. We speak here through the voice of party; that is true. That is our system with its attendant good and evil. But there are occasions when the House of Commons has to transcend party politics, to transcend party ties, when the challenge is so grave that we have to speak on behalf of the community and the nation which we as a body represent. I believe that this debate is one of those occasions.
Of course, I understand the depth and bitterness of feelings, particularly of hon. Members who represent constituencies where the unemployment rate is not 10 per cent. but is nearer 20 or 25 per cent. National averages do not always reflect local realities. They are abstractions. However, it is precisely because of the profundity of feeling, not only of people here but of those we represent, that we must seek to speak within the parameters of reason.
Let us first seek to establish what is common ground in the House—and establish a framework within which divergences and differences can certainly be deployed. I would select three points of convergence. First, we should recognise, as the Secretary of State pointed out, that unemployment is not a domestic problem confined to Britain. It is an affliction plaguing the whole of the industrialised world. In the EEC alone 8 million people are now unemployed.
I welcome the change of tone at the June meeting of the OECD, when it was made clear that priorities at that level are changing. We should seek solutions for an international problem at an international level—at the European summit; with our partners in the Western Alliance and, most important of all, at the congruence of rich and poor nations which is to take place in Mexico City in the autumn and at which I am delighted to say my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is to represent our country.
The second point of accord is that no hon. Member and no party countenances for a moment the deliberate fostering of unemployment as an instrument of policy. That would he not only to deny the humanity that we share; it would he to court devastating and instant electoral punishment.
The third stretch of common ground which we stand upon is that, in part, unemployment figures mirror the long-term inefficiency and overmanning of British industry. The shake-out began under the Government of the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan), as he knows, and has continued under my

right hon. Friend's Government. It is a matter for discussion what or who is responsible; whether weak management or restrictive trade unions bear the major share of responsiblility. The important consideration is how to advance from the point that we have reached.
Every hon. Member knows that there is no simple answer. No painless panacea can be produced.

Mr. Skinner: There is an answer.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I agree with the hon. Gentleman up to a point.
Although there may be no simple answer, that is not to say that there are not ways forward, nor means by which the situation can be improved. I do not share what is becoming a fashionable kind of pessimism. Determinism may be a doctrine of philosophy; it is not a doctrine of parliamentary democracy. Our fate is largely in our own hands today, as it has always been.
My point of departure this afternoon is the recognition that the Government—any Government—have the duty to help create the conditions in which people have the opportunity to work. Of course, there should be a fair day's work for a fair day's pay, but there must be an occasion to earn the pay—actually to have the chance to work. The situation is now so grave that the reduction of unemployment must be given a higher priority in the Government's thinking over the whole economic sphere. The determining criterion in any further reductions in Government expenditure must be whether they hinder or help to reduce the jobless total.
Ministers must concentrate their minds on both short-term and long-term measures that provide more jobs. The whole discourse of the Government must adapt itself to that set of priorities. The time has come to concentrate on the second part of Government strategy—the invigoration and renewal of British industry, whether that industry be on the manufacturing or the service side.
May I take first the long-term problem to which all the resources of the Government should be devoted? It is how best we can make the transition to a society that is bound to be based more on service industries and less on manufacturing industries. It is a repetition in another form of the nineteenth century problem, when we had to move from an economy based on agriculture to one based on industry—and the problem faces all the older industrial countries of the world. We should also in the long term be considering whether it is desirable to have planned early retirement, and how we can move towards greater equality between men and women in that regard.
In the short term, of course, the battle against inflation must continue. Higher inflation means fewer jobs, because it means a loss of competitiveness. Above all, it must mean fewer jobs in a country as dependent on exports as we are. The Government have wrestled inflation down from the ascending curve where we found it when we took office two years ago.
I do not believe that there can be any question of a general reflation, such as is advocated by the Labour Party or the TUC, although I understand the reasoning behind it. It would bring back rising inflation, with hyper-inflation hovering in the wings. However, to say that is not to accept the free market view that reduction in the rate of inflation will itself automatically bring about a resurgence of economic growth. That is a theory; it is not a proved fact.
The hope that the savings ratio will go down as inflation comes down and so refuel the economy is unproven and, in fact, unprovable. There may well be a closer connection between rising unemployment and higher savings to those who are in work than between lower savings and lower inflation. Perhaps the fear of unemployment forces people to save. In any case, a higher proportion of savings today than ever before, is contractual, and is not subject, therefore, to variable economic indicators.
Our task, therefore, is not to test undemonstrable economic hypotheses, nor to follow reckless reflationary policies. It is to try to chart out a middle way of reason and common sense. "No", then, to general reflation, but "Yes" to controlled expansion with selective stimuli applied, especially for capital expenditure. We need greater demand in the economy if we are to create more jobs. It cannot come from the consumer after the last Budget; it is unlikely to come from increased exports on the Government's own forecasts, although exports have held up remarkably well. I believe that it can come only from selective expansion in the public and private sectors.
Let me give an example of what I mean. Private housing starts are at a level for which one has to go back to the 1920s to find a parallel. One way to stimulate private housing would be for local authorities to release a great deal more land to the private builder, so that the house building rate could be raised once again.
What we need, is increased investment. I do not believe that that will come from the reduction of interest rates alone, although that may help. My position is really the same as that of Lord Thorneycroft, who, in discussing the subject in the other place some weeks ago, described himself as "a constructive interventionist". In the situation that we face, monetarism alone is simply not enough.
I hope, too, that we shall seek an early reduction in taxation. If we do that, of course, some of the increased purchasing power will be sucked into imports. That has happened before, but never more than 50 per cent., even at the worst of past import booms. We should also move towards an early reduction in the national insurance surcharge, which is basically nothing more than a poll tax on jobs. I believe that our success in reducing inflation makes these changes more urgent, not less.
As in the economic, so in the industrial sphere, we need not a U-turn, but adaptations of policy such as those described by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House in recent speeches. Above all, we need a clear conceptual framework within which to operate.
On gaining office two years ago, our industrial strategy was to disengage ourselves as much as we could from the industrial sphere. But it was never a practical proposition, whatever the theorists may have proclaimed, to stand aside from the nationalised industries—huge monopolies which take decisions affecting the lives of millions throughout the nation. The experience of the past two years has proved that beyond reasonable doubt.
There has been intervention after intervention in the nationalised industries. The external financing limits have proved to be a thin red line, constantly breached. That has been the story with British Steel, British Leyland, the National Coal Board and ICL. We have been getting the worst of all worlds because we have been intervening, not

on a basis of principle, but on an ad hoc basis, and we have been given no credit, least of all by the Labour Party, for any of our interventions.
I believe that the time has also come to move away from the idea, which was never much more than a slogan, that all public expenditure is bad and only private investment is good. Wise investment—and it must be wise—and wise expenditure decisions in the public sphere have very often a directly beneficial effect on private industry. Public expenditure in spheres such as defence, roads and railways is crucial to the future of British industry. I speak from my own constituency experience where firms such as Marconi and English Electric are heavily dependent upon defence contracts for their survival.
We need from the Ministry of Defence—perhaps we shall get it tomorrow—a coherent public purchasing policy tailored to the needs of British industry. If that means buying British, so be it. Our industrial strategy, after all, should be to invest in success and not to prop up failure. Too much of our public capital has been going into industries of the past when it should go into industries of the future.
The potential for British information technology, for example, and for automated manufacturing systems, is immense, particularly as the English language is the international language of the communications world. We have made a start in this direction with programmes such as the microprocessor awareness programme and the microelectronic support programme, but we need to do much more. As the name of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is being invoked by Opposition Members, I should add that she is quite right to say that it is now the turn of the private sector. This would be one way of showing it. Far more needs to be spent on research and development.
Just as we need an industrial strategy, so we need a greater coherence in our approaches to wages and salaries. Perhaps the most significant figure to emerge in the past few days has been what I believe is the Chancellor's figure of a 16 per cent. increase in output over the last decade, but a 335 per cent. increase in pay.
The Prime Minister also has laid increasing emphasis on the relationship of wages and salaries to economic prosperity and to employment. The last three Governments all started by underestimating the importance of wage and salary rises and their relation to job losses. The question now is not whether we are to have restraint—the Secretary of State made it clear again today that we must follow that path—but whether we are getting it in the right way.
The present practice in the public sector really comes down to giving in to those who have industrial muscle and standing up to those who have not. I do not believe that that is just or equitable. Nor do I believe that in the long run it is tenable. It surely must be an invitation to those who so far have behaved well to go ahead and behave badly, following the example of those who have gained.
I make this further point. What is to happen when the economy begins to grow again? Are we to go back to the bad old days of excessive wage claims out of step with rises in productivity? As with general economic policy, so with wages and salaries, we need to stake out the central ground between the extremes.
The way forward was shown in a policy document approved by the then Shadow Cabinet—I know, because I was a member of it—called "The Right Approach to the Economy", and subtitled "Outline of an Economic


Strategy for the Next Conservative Government". That document was published in the names of a star-studded quartet—the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Secretary of State for Industry, the Secretary of State for Energy and the Secretary of State for Employment. The authors made it clear in that document that a forum of all the major economic interests was desirable in order to establish common ground about the economy.
Has not the time now come to turn that idea into a reality? Could it not be the scene, not for an incomes policy, but for some kind of concordat—spoken or unspoken, written or unwritten—between the Government, unions and management, balancing wage restraint against positive measures to expand the economy and check the rise in unemployment?
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State referred to the particular plight of the young unemployed. One can hardly think of a worse beginning to adult life than to find oneself standing in a dole queue. I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the measures that he has succeeded in getting through the Cabinet, and I congratulate the Government on what they have done to help young and other people who are unemployed. It is remarkable that nearly 1 million people have been helped in this way. But we must do more. It is no good training people at 16 and 17, who at 18 will have no job to go to. My right hon. Friend is right, however, to say that perhaps if job opportunities could be increased it would be right for young people to accept a lower level of pay.
We need to do much more for the 18 and 19-year-olds. I commend to the Secretary of State the idea put forward by my right hon. Friend the Member for Stafford and Stone (Sir H. Fraser) of a form of national service, although I do not agree that that service should be compulsory. It should be voluntary. I believe that some form of voluntary service, if it was worked out and thought through, would be welcomed by a great many people in this country.
I wish to conclude with two reflections. One is political. The other is moral.
When I first entered political life, after the war, I stood in the 1951 general election in the Conservative interest in Dagenham. For some unaccountable reason I was not elected, but I recall the lessons that I learnt during that compaign. The lesson that I learnt above all was the difficulty that every Tory candidate faced because of the connection that had formed in people's minds, as a result of the horrendous experience of the 1930s, between Conservatism and unemployment. It was as though people had a stain on their imagination. It would be a major political disaster if that stain were allowed to re-appear now.
Secondly, and perhaps more important, it is the duty of every Member of the Government and the House to recognise unemployment for what it is—a moral evil of the first order. We must be determined to remedy it in so far as it is within our power so to do. If it is left unchecked it will destroy not only the traditions of civility that are so important to public life, but our cohesion as one nation, and ultimately, it will undermine our free institutions themselves.
We should never forget that in Britain there is probably a larger moral constituency than in any other comparable democratic country in the world. It is made up of people who are interested in public life, not for what they can get out of it, but because they seek a better and fuller life for

their fellow citizens. They do not see Britain as made up of warring factions. They see it as a family based on a broad sense of community, with shared needs and concerns and common aspirations.
It is no part of Government policy, nor should it be, to write off any part of this country, or to bypass any part of it, through callousness or electoral calculation. It is to that vision of society, based on shared interest and community, that we must respond, and we should do so sensitively, intelligently and determinedly.

Mr. Jack Ashley: We have just listened to a striking speech. When the Prime Minister responds later tonight, we shall be listening for her reaction to the suggestions made by the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas).
The right hon. Gentleman spoke for a large number of hon. Members on both sides of the House when he suggested that the Prime Minister ought to give a higher priority to employment. That has been the great failure of the Government. They have failed to give top priority to employment.
It is some years since the right hon. Gentleman and I regularly crossed swords in the Cambridge Union. However, now as then, he speaks with elegance, wit, sensitivity and skill. His skill today was to condemn the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State while at the same time diplomatically praising them. That is the measure of the right hon. Gentleman's diplomacy, and I congratulate him on it.
However, I would not like his diplomacy to mask the urgent message that he gave the House, which was that the Government are failing to deal with the terrible problem of unemployment. If, as I believe, other Conservative Members feel the same as the right hon. Gentleman, the time is coming when the Government will be in grave trouble. Therefore, the Prime Minister would be well advised to listen carefully to the right hon. Gentleman's propositions.
It is not only Conservative Members like the right hon. Gentleman who feel deeply about unemployment. Like the right hon. Member for Chelmsford, the Secretary of State spoke with understanding about this House being a forum for debate. I agree. However, the Secretary of State must beware as moderate and reasonable people are now taking to the streets because they feel passionately, and are so bitter, about unemployment. Those of us who share those views, and who want this House to be a forum of debate, may well find that the people who take to the streets will take power out of the hands of Parliament if unemployment continues to rise. I do not like to give such a warning, but account must be taken of it. People are now feeling desperate, and as a result the Government must be careful.
The Secretary of State said that it was not the Government's fault, but he must recognise that the Government cannot abdicate their responsibility. They have a major role to play in guiding the destinies of the nation. Therefore, instead of suggesting that the fault lies elsewhere, the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister ought to consider whether the time has now come for a wholehearted change in policy.
It is remarkable that at a critical time of mass unemployment which is spreading like the plague, some Ministers—not the Secretary of State for


Employment—are suggesting that it is merely a question of people flowing peacefully from one job to another within a matter of weeks. It is not like that at all, but that was what the Secretary of State for Industry said a few days ago. That is quite wrong and misleading. It may be true that some people move from one job to another, but it is not true of school leavers, older workers, the handicapped, people living in areas of high unemployment and people living in areas where unemployment is rising quickly.
Unemployment is defacing our society, scarring our people and damaging our economy. It is causing misery, poverty, wretchedness and fear throughout the land, and that is emphatically not what St. Francis of Assisi advocated. However, there is no sign whatever—there was certainly none today in the Secretary of State's speech—of any significant change in Government policy. That is what we clearly require, because it is undeniable that Government policies and priorities have pushed unemployment to its present frightening heights.
If the Government persist with their disastrous policies, they have an obligation to answer an important question about their attitude. I should now like to put that question to the Prime Minister, and I hope that she will answer it this evening, if she can. It was put by Professor Wynne Godley of Cambridge university some time ago, and I now invite the right hon. Lady to give a categoric answer. At what level of unemployment will the Government agree that something has gone seriously wrong and that a drastic change of policy is required? If it is not 2 million unemployed, is it 3 million? If not 3 million, is it 5 million? If not 5 million, what? That specific question requires a positive answer, and I hope that the right hon. Lady will respond to it.
I pose the question because sooner or later the Government will have to recognise what the unemployed, the country, Labour Members and even some Conservative Members have recognised—that there is a limit to the rate of unemployment. We believe that that limit has been reached in moral, social and economic terms.
Where does the Government's limit lie? Do they have to wait for the election run-up before they do something substantial—as distinct from the small measures outlined by the Secretary of State—about unemployment?
The Government see unemployment as the necessary price to be paid for reducing inflation. I recognise that inflation is a serious problem. I understand the difficulty. However, reduced inflation will be the only remaining jewel in a corroded crown at the next election. It will be a phoney gem bought at an exhorbitant price by a Government who have lost all sense of human values. The right hon. Member for Chelmsford spoke about the effect of mass unemployment on one's conscience. The Government mislead the country by implying that there is a once-and-for-all price and by implying that when inflation has been brought down they can tackle unemployment.
I challenge the Prime Minister. High unemployment is not a once-and-for-all price for tackling inflation. As soon as the Government, with their policies, attempt to expand the economy, the inflationary pressures will begin to reassert themselves. We shall be back to square one. The Prime Minister is cornered in a "Catch-22" situation.

Given her excessive reliance on the market, mass unemployment is the perpetual price to be paid for reducing inflation. We badly need expansion. However, the Government are caught in a net of their own choosing. They cannot expand the economy without facing the fearful danger of stoking reflation. The Prime Minister might rightly ask us what the alternative is. She might say "Never mind anything else, what do you propose?" That would be a fair question. With all humility, I suggest that such dangers can be overcome by a method that is contrary to Conservative philosophy, but nevertheless necessary. That method is to develop an effective agreement on incomes and to limit the growth of imports to an acceptable level.
The right hon. Member for Chelmsford said that he was suggesting not an incomes policy but a concordat. With great respect, he is playing with words. A concordat is a form of incomes policy. However, let us not be too pedantic. We need an agreed policy on incomes. Unless the Government can secure that, they will get nowhere. The Prime Minister has prevented herself from taking steps towards such a concordat because, as a result of hard and hostile attitude to the trade unions, she has made it more difficult to reach a voluntary agreement on incomes. That is the right hon. Lady's attitude at present. However, like all pragmatic Conservatives the right hon. Lady will eventually have to come to terms with reality. Failure to do so will be as destructive of the Government as it will be of the country. That should be a powerful inducement to the Government to change their ways.
The control of imports is the ultimate answer to the problem of imports rushing in as we expand. Such imports simply provide jobs for foreigners and give us balance of payments problems. That is followed by the usual stop-go waltz of economic disaster. For far too long both this, and the previous Government have shirked import controls because of the fear of retaliation by our competitors. That fear is legitimate and we must face it if we are to advocate import controls. However, I am coming round to the view that objection to import controls is invalid.
Foreign countries have recognised that a strong and healthy Britain is in their interests as much as in ours. They do not want to cripple Britain, because they, in turn, would be damaged. Our foreign competitors—our foreign friends—would not object to import controls provided that they were applied sensibly and with due regard to the Third world's need for exports. Those exports should be regarded as important as our problems. Given that caveat, I am in favour of more stringent import controls.
I do not wish to speak for long, but I wish to turn to the issues that affect Stoke-on-Trent and North Staffordshire. I wish to do so not only because of a constituency interest, but because, perhaps more than any other area, Stoke-on-Trent and North Staffordshire illustrate the utter and absolute failure of the Government's policies. That illustration undermines every argument that the Prime Minister and her Ministers put forward about their policy. In the Potteries there is a skilled labour force whose members are paid reasonable wages. There are some modernised factories. In addition, the area has witnessed technological advance, a fine sales record, high exports, and excellent labour relations. What more could any Government want? What more could any economist want? What more could any free enterprise industrialist want? Presumably, a Government should encourage such an ideal centre. However, they are not doing so. Despite the


outstanding and, in some ways rare combination of attractive economic features, Stoke-on-Trent and North Staffordshire are wilting under a series of grave body blows which threaten to knock the area out.
Again, the right hon. Member for Chelmsford needs to be answered. He said that we should try to encourage the good. Let us do so. I respect and admire that fine principle. However I have given a prime example of the good and the fine. I do not say that only because my constituency is involved. This is a marvellous, moderate and far-sighted industry that exports most of its products. There are no labour relations troubles, yet the Government are damaging the industry. That is inexcusable, wrong and short-sighted. I urge the Government to think again.
I deeply resent the figures that I shall give to the House. Should any hon. Member doubt them, they are on record. In May 1979, when the Conservative Party came to office, the rate of unemployment in North Staffordshire was a mere 4·1 per cent. Only 9,000 people were out of work. Today, after the Government's application of their policies, the number out of work has almost trebled, to 25,000. In two years of Conservative Government the figure has almost trebled. The percentage of those out of work has jumped from 4·1 per cent. to 11·9 per cent. Those are staggering figures. Short-time working affects 11,000 to 12,000 people. Yesterday, the mighty Michelin factory, which is one of the finest rubber factories in the world, announced that it was going on to a short-time working week. Is that not a shocking and disgraceful record for any Government to hold? The situation is not the fault of the workers or of management but, of the Government and their policies.
We can do without any mealy-mouthed euphemisms about shedding labour to be fitter for the industrial race. I am talking abut highly skilled and dedicated pottery workers—men and women who are being pushed out from the pottery industry through no fault of their own.
These people are suffering just as much, if not more, than any others, through the Government's misguided policies. These policies include high interest rates that cripple borrowing, high exchange rates that damage exports and high energy prices that inflate costs. The Government cannot accuse the workers of North Staffordshire of working themselves out of a job because of exorbitant wages, because the wages are not exorbitant. They cannot accuse them of striking themselves out of a job by too many disputes because there are no strides, nor can they accuse them of missing markets by failing to export, because most of their products are exported. The fault for the present malaise lies squarely on the Government's shoulders.
The Government should be warned that if, as in this case, they continue to cripple the golden goose they will be transforming the bird into a lame duck. They will be doing more than changing nature. They will be demonstrating their total incapacity to provide the incentive society that was the promise on which they were elected.
North Staffordshire is on the path to disaster. The figures for unemploymemt are bad enough, but the trend is catastrophic. If it continues at this rate, trebling in the next two years, there will be 60,000 people walking the streets of the Potteries. Given that trend the Potteries needs action. It needs Government assistance, intermediate status, cash for training and retraining, assistance on fuel prices and, above all, a revival of demand.
What North Staffordshire and the country need is assurance that problems of unemployment will be considered by the Government, that the slide will be stopped and will not be elbowed aside. I hope that the Government will recognise that the problems of mass unemployment in North Staffordshire are exposing the poverty of their policies. I ask the Prime Minister to consider what has been said on both sides, to think again and revise her policies before it is too late.

Mr. Bob Dunn: I have the privilege of representing a constituency in the South-East. The unemployment figures for the South-East, which were reported yesterday, show an increase from 4·3 per cent. of the total working population in 1980 to 7·7 per cent. on 11 June 1981. The South-East region is now feeling the effects of the recession that the rest of the country has felt in recent months.
It is only fair to state the changes that have taken place in my constituency against the background of the unemployment figures for the country as a whole. The figure for the country now is 11·1 per cent. That compares with an unemployment rate in Belgium of 14·1 per cent., 8·9 per cent. in Denmark, 9·1 per cent. in France, only 5·2 per cent. in West Germany, 12·8 per cent. in Ireland, 8·2 per cent. in Holland, 2·2 per cent. in Japan, 7 per cent. in Canada and 7·6 per cent. in the United States.
Last year in the Western industrialised world, unemployment increased by 3 million. The good news in the latest set of figures is that, during 1981, 275,000 people per month have been finding new jobs after a period of unemployment. In The Daily Telegraph of Wednesday 24 June the City comment is:
Hardly anybody commenting in public yesterday about the June unemployment figures remarked on the good news: the increase of 38,000, after making seasonal adjustments and ignoring for the moment school leavers, was the lowest for 13 months. Taken by itself, this is further proof that economic activity has stopped declining, although there are not yet any signs of recovery. Last autumn the monthly increase in unemployed was running at over 100,000 persons.
The problem that faces the Government is the size and growth of the bureaucracy in our community. In 1955 the figure for local government workers, both full and part time, was 1,100,000. By 1980 that figure had increased to 2,600,000. We are constantly made aware in the Chamber of the enormous burdens that national and local taxation cause the local community. It is now clearly evidenced in places such as Lambeth that the local burden of taxation through rates is now working as a positive and vicious disincentive to the expansion of industry.
The behaviour of local government in going beyond the guidelines set down by this and other Governments has gone far too far. In Southwark only last week we were told that the direct works department responsible for highways and works last year overspent to the tune of £900,000. Clearly, an enormous rates revenue must be levied to recover that amount.
In the papers today, we have been told that the West Midlands county council is thinking of imposing a rates levy later in the year amounting to an increase of 31·7 per cent. That increase will militate against the employment prospects in the area.
I look forward to the efforts of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment bearing fruit but I castigate those local authorities, whether Labour or


Conservative, who will not take advantage—or have not so far—of the measures enacted by the Government which allow them to privatise their services or functions resulting in enormous savings to the local community. So far, I know of only one local authority that has taken advantage of the scheme. That is the borough of Southend, where there has been a large reduction of £500,000 in the cost of public cleansing. The result is that, in the last financial year, Southend was the only authority in the country which reduced the rates burden by 1p in the pound.

Mr. Teddy Taylor: The figure was 1·17p.

Mr. Dunn: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I cannot understand why more local authorities, especially if they are of a Conservative persuasion, do not examine the functions and services that they carry out. If it is shown that the local authority carries out those services in a straightforward and cost saving way, no complaint need be made. However, local authorities must be required to examine their functions and services to see whether there could not be a better return to the authority with an improvement of service or, at least, the maintenance of the same service to the benefit of the local business and domestic community.
We have heard today about the lack of investment in British industry in the past 30 years. There was a good article in The Daily Telegraph the other day by Roland Gribben on the approach by the National Panasonic company of Japan. That company is about to increase research and investment from $500 million a year to $1,000 million a year and by 1983 to improve on its research establishment of 6,000 research staff in 23 centres. A leading executive of that company is quoted as saying:
The world has a population of 4,000 million out of which only 1,000 million have the electronic culture"—
whatever that means.
Nonetheless it is clearly shown that that company is prepared to take advantage of the opportunities that lie abroad. The chief executive, Mr. Isomura, goes on to say:
Last year 40 per cent. of its $13,689 million sales came from overseas operations through direct export of its 59 manufacturing outlets in 32 countries.
Clearly an aggressive approach such as that might be copied by many companies in the United Kingdom.
I was concerned by the speeches from the Opposition about the lack of alternative, radical, appropriate, positive policies that might result in an improvement in our present circumstances. Clearly, there has been no shortage of speeches that have defined the present problem, but there has been a radical shortage of Opposition Members prepared to pose real and radical solutions. The Labour Party's suggestion of a massive increase in public spending will not solve the present unemployment problem.
Hon. Members have harked back and will hark back to the so-called success of President Roosevelt in the 1930s, and the great public expenditure investment programme that the American Government then followed. But it does not follow that because there are great increases in public expenditure, a definite improvement in the industrial base of this country will result. Far from it. In the 1930s in this country it was not public expenditure that brought about

an improvement in employment prospects. It was the efforts of local entrepreneurs and business men who dragged themselves up by their bootstraps and created improved job opportunities for the people.
I am very concerned about the prospect of young people leaving school to go on to the dole. I welcomed the announcement in recent months by the Department of Education and Science of the policy of seeking to provide each secondary school with a computer and with computer aids so that young people can equip themselves with the necessary knowledge to work in word processing and microtechnolgy. I should also like to see an involvement by institutions of further education and higher education in our local schools, to enable them to train young people for the tasks ahead.
I suggest to my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer that when firms buy cars for their car pools, tax relief should apply only if such firms buy British cars. I cannot see the logic of having tax relief when companies purchase foreign cars.
I hope that in the next month we shall hear an announcement about the role of trade unions and trade union legislation. Much remains to be done in legislation and I hope that the elimination of some of the restrictive practices will be considered by the Government in the months ahead. I hope that, in the winding-up speech, we shall hear from the Opposition an answer to the question posed to the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Varley) in respect of Sandwell borough. I look forward to a satisfactory answer about the Opposition's attitude to the closed shop in that borough.
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment on the way he spoke today. Unemployment is, indeed, a great problem. My grandmother died in 1926 from malnutrition caused by the General Strike. My grandfather was unemployed for three years in the 1930s. My brother was made redundant before Christmas. The problem of unemployment affects everyone of us in every sphere of life. I know that the Government are intent on reducing the pernicious problems of unemployment, and in that they have my full support.

Miss Joan Lestor: I have always found it difficult to take at face value the statement that local authorities are overspending, and that if they would only cut back things would be very much improved. It is right that local authorities and Governments should from time to time review what is taking place and how money is being spent, be it the taxpayers' or the ratepayers' money. But when the call for cuts by local authorities bears no relation whatever to the needs of the community in an area, and when the cuts create more unemployment, we need a more satisfactory analysis of what is taking place in local authority areas. It is not sufficient simply to say that there must be more cuts because local authorities are overspending.
I do not know how my local authority can be accused of overspending when we have the gravest housing problem that we have had in the area in the 16 years that I have known it. I fail to understand how it can be accused of overspending when we have grave problems relating to the social services. They are partly due to the migration


over the years of families seeking work in Slough, which has always been a magnet for labour. There is no point now in migrating to seek work in Slough.
When people make statements about overspending by local authorities and about cutting back, those statements should be related to the needs of the areas. Often the cuts, which reduce the services that are needed, create more unemployment in their turn, so that the saving is merely a bookkeeping transaction. There may be savings shown in local authority areas but more public expenditure is shown in the unemployment ledger. We should all, therefore, be a little more precise when we are talking in those terms.

Mr. Bob Dunn: Will the hon. Lady give way?

Miss Lestor: Not yet; I have only just risen.
The Secretary of State for Employment said that the prospect of unemployment had been envisaged for some time. He said that the Conservatives knew it when they were in Opposition, and that it was recognised that the prospect for this country was long-term unemployment. But that was not said by the Conservative Party during the general election. At a time when unemployment was very much lower than today, and when inflation was very much lower than it is today, the Conservative Party hired unemployed actors to depict in a poster the queues of unemployed because, as the party alleged, "Labour is not working". The inference was that a Conservative Government would be able to reduce unemployment. That was why many people voted Conservative. They believed that unemployment would be reduced, just as they believed many other things that the Conservative party promised them.
It is unfair of the right hon. Gentleman to say "We have never pretended otherwise, because we always knew that unemployment was a long-term feature". His party did not say that at the time of the general election; it said something different.
I do not want to go into great detail about my constituency. The hon. Member for Dartford (Mr. Dunn) said that the problems of the South-East were, perhaps for the first time in our history, becoming very grave. Slough has escaped the recessions of earlier years. Even during those recessions, Slough attracted people from the Welsh valleys, from Scotland and from many other parts of the world. It is not as badly off as other areas, and its unemployment figure does not approach the national average, but industries are closing down, and large numbers of industries are on short time. In the main, it is an area of small light engineering industries, and they are now realising that their hopes of assistance from the Government will never be realised.
Conservative Members, when speaking of the causes of unemployment, refer to the excessive wage claims, the restrictive practices, overmanning and so on. But none of those things is true of Slough. Over the years, Slough has had very good industrial relations. It has not had excessive wage claims. It has not had restrictive practices. Yet now, for almost the first time in our history—certainly in the living memory of my constituents—Slough is facing and feeling the results of the recession. When we are looking for the causes, we cannot simply make an overall statement that those are the causes.
When my colleagues in the textile areas say that the textile industry, which is now so drastically reduced and

is in such terrible trouble, has never been a high-wage industry, Conservative Members reply that in the textile industry the problems are due to something else. Obviously, therefore, these bland statements do not help us very much.
Ever since the Conservative Government came to office, the Prime Minister and others have put all their eggs in one basket. They have argued consistently that we have got to reduce inflation, and that if we can reduce inflation unemployment will drop. Whether they believed it or not, or whether it was simply a theory that was held, the facts are to the contrary. Although inflation, which soared at the beginning of the Government's period of office, has come down and has fluctuated a little in the last few months, nobody makes any predictions other than that unemployment will continue to rise. There may be arguments about the rate at which it will rise. The theory that the reduction of inflation would cause unemployment to fall has been proved not to apply to the problem that confronts us.
The tragedy is that the Government go on acting in exactly the same way. Thousands of men and women—reluctant recruits into the army of the unemployed in the battle against inflation—now find that, in addition to the loss of jobs, the battle itself has been lost.. Many of them will never work again because they are past the age at which people will employ them.
I have asked previously whether the rise in unemployment is a deliberate act of the Government in order to reduce inflation or an accident. It must be one or the other. Have the Government decided that this is a period through which the country must go in order to deal with overmanning? One of the effects in my constituency of soaring unemployment is that the purchasing power of people is reduced. When people buy fewer goods, this becomes another factor in the spiral of unemployment. More people become unemployed as a result of lower demand. It is obvious that production will not increase if a growing number of people who were engaged in productive activities are no longer engaged in them. This is reflected in the South-East and constituencies such as mine. In the past, Slough has escaped and has been able to attract many people without jobs from different parts of the country. Not long ago, the Prime Minister herself was saying that people should move to areas where jobs were available. Unhappily, there are now no such places.
In a courageous speech, the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) referred to the importance of housing. It must seem odd and a contradiction to anyone studying our society that we pay qualified construction workers not to build houses when hundreds of people are badly housed and crying our for accommodation. Instead of allowing local authorities to build and ensuring that they have the money to expand housing programmes, the Government argue that it is better that construction workers should be paid not to build houses. That is monstrous. The argument about saving public expenditure is seen to be a contradiction as the unemployment bill continues to soar. I wonder how much revenue from North Sea oil is now used to meet unemployment payments. That is public expenditure. The same argument applies to education and hospital facilities. There is a basic contradiction in the policy.

Mr. Bob Dunn: Does the hon. Lady agree that private enterprise should be allowed to undertake local authority services and functions if it can maintain the same level of service while saving money?

Miss Lestor: I am not sure what the hon. Gentleman aims to prove. My argument is that local authorities are not able to meet desperate social needs within their areas because the cuts have forced them to put people out of work. The question of carrying out work more cheaply or more expensively does not arise. The whole application of the cuts policy is an expensive operation. At the same time as people remain inadequately housed or homeless, those who could build the houses are paid not to build, which increases public expenditure.
I believe that many Conservative Members, like Opposition Members, are concerned about the tragedy of young people without jobs. A headline in The Daily Telegraph stated:
117,000 youngsters join the one-in-nine without work.
The outlook for those young people is fearful. Everywhere that I look in my constituency and every journal that I read concerned with training makes a point that the Government should take on board. The Secretary of State spoke about young people staying longer at school and also about training courses. However, school courses applicable to the needs of the country in five or 10 years' time are being drastically cut. Training courses are also being drastically cut.
The principal of Slough college, together with some industrialists from my constituency, who came to see me about the cuts asked why the Government could not see that the skills needed in the future, if we get out of the recession, are being abandoned by industry, by colleges of technology and by the schools. It has to be recognised that the training and skills of the 1950s will not be applicable to the demands at the end of the 1980s and in the 1990s. We are removing the seed corn which will enable us to climb out of recession if a change occurs. It is a sad reflection on all of us that this should be happening.
I can give many examples of the attitude of local authorities towards grants for young people wishing to take training courses. A young woman at Plymouth college of art and design, described as the best applicant for her age at the college, has been refused a grant by the Berkshire authority for a course concerned with industrial training. That has happened presumably because the authority does not have the money to meet the grant. Hon. Members will take up such cases as they are brought to our notice. The case I have described, which could be multiplied many times, concerns a young person with the ability to take a course. The college needs her, and industry recognises the applicability of the course to the future. Yet she is denied the opportunity because the local authority does not have the money.
It has been argued that wages councils have created a false level of wages for young people who make demands that are unreal in relation to their contribution. I have checked, as quickly as possible, on the wages organised by wages councils. For adults working a 40-hour week, wages range between £35·50 and £57·60. For young people, the figures are lower. I do not believe the argument can be sustained that young people have priced themselves out of the market. One cannot have both ways the argument that the reduction of the age of majority has

brought more people into the adult world demanding adult wages. If young people of 18 are regarded as adult and able to vote, to marry, to join the Armed Forces and to have a mortgage, it cannot be argued that they must live on wages that fail to accord with the national average, although that happens to be the case if their pay is governed by wages councils.

Mr. Raymond Whitney: Is the hon. Lady aware that for every 10 per cent. that wages have been increased by wages councils, the number of people employed has decreased by 10 per cent?

Miss Lestor: I am dealing with the argument that young people have priced themselves out of the market. On the figures for wages councils available to me, the argument cannot be true. The wages for adults are not excessive. They are nothing like the national average wage. For young people, they amount to even less.
Two or three years ago the OECD produced a report dealing with trends in society and particularly the long-term effects of unemployment. Paul MacCracker, chairman of the committee, which made the report, said:
The fact that high levels of unemployment have not caused more social and political unrest is a tribute to the efficiency of today's system of income maintenance and social services. But there can be no complacency about the consequences of prolonged unemployment on social, racial, religious and regional tensions and in time, on attitudes to work and to society in general".
That is true. The forecast is beginning to be realised. Many young people will not feel that they owe anything to society. They are taught that society is not prepared to treat them as reasonable and responsible human beings. The direct result of unemployment can be seen on the faces of young people in many inner cities. Young people are beginning to question authority. It will not be long before they question parliamentary democracy. If we fail, the young people and they are unable to work they will lose confidence in the normal channels of parliamentary democracy. Then the country will have a serious problem.
I see the fear in the faces of young people who cannot get jobs. What is happening to them rubs off on the children in school. I believe that much of the talk about growing social unrest is exaggerated. However, we have seen examples of it in some cities recently. Deprivation as a result of expenditure cuts and hopelessness as a result of unemployment occurs. The Government must recognise that if there is a breakdown in confidence in authority and in attitudes to the police and parliamentary democracy we shall be held responsible for the tragedies that result.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: I remind the House that speeches have been so long that it will be difficult to call all right hon. and hon. Members who wish to be called.

6 pm

Sir Hugh Fraser: I congratulate the hon. Member for Eton and Slough (Miss Lestor) on her last few words. The situation is serious. I welcome the presence of the Prime Minister, who is to answer this important debate. I hope to make my remarks in a reasonable time.
Alas, we are faced no longer with the cyclical problems of unemployment but with a profound and absolute change in job opportunities. That is what makes the debate so important. The symptoms began to become evident in the early 1970s. They are caused not only by inflation but by


new world market forces, technical innovations, the historic and structural weaknesses of Britain with the oldest industrial economy and infrastructure—and a population which is larger than the optimum for our existing industrial and agricultural base. We must find answers to those problems.
If we take the theories proposed by the hon. Member for Eton and Slough, by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) by any member of the Bennite group, or even by the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food speaking in the United States, and put them on the rack of an econometric model at any university the mincing machine will spit out at the end of the exercise high unemployment figures of around 3,000,000. That problem would face us whether the Labour, Conservative, Social Democratic or Liberal Party was in office. The problems are intractable but they must be faced and solutions must be found.
People engaged in Government or business know that a ruthless efficiency audit in the public and private sectors would throw up figures of overmanning in some industries and in large parts of the public sector.
The present industrial work force is capable, without further recruitment, of producing between 5 per cent. and 10 per cent. more goods. The number of apprenticeships is falling, partly because of the change in the industrial structure.
We must deal with the change. Change always strikes its own balance sheet of pluses and minuses. Changes must take place. Look around: they produce many pluses. They produce new industries, new money, new jobs and new skills. But as we restructure industry and outlook, employment becomes the void and the minus. We must ensure that that minus on the balance sheet is not written in blood and tears. In that respect I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford and the hon. Member for Eton and Slough. Unless we find remedies, the structure of society will be in danger. That is why I welcome the presence of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister.
One day these issues will be sorted out. Man's ingenuity and response to the problems will produce the result. However, that day might be a long way off. The market forces of the world must be tempered by Government action. A new look is needed.
Not only the economics of society but the structure of society could be in danger. That is why the Government are right to switch their mind to considering the future of our political structure. The future of that structure depends upon youth, its hope and aspirations. That is where the more tangible part of the problem lies.
The Government are right to give youth employment and training high priority. The question is whether what is proposed is enough, whether it is purposeful and positive, whether it will create an impetus of its own and whether it will realise and release the enormous potential energy in youth. Many of the schemes originally proposed by the Labour Government, such as the youth opportunities programme, used to result in real jobs. However, as unemployment grows three dangers emerge. First, there is the growing challenge of cheap, substitute labour; secondly, the interlude of training with no job as a result; and thirdly, the stigma of unwantedness. That involves a division in society not just between the haves and have-nots, between the ins and the outs, but between those with hope and those without it. As President

Kennedy once said, one goes round the track only once. My fear is that some young people in Britain will not get on the track at all.
This afternoon the Minister spoke about various improved schemes, including the youth opportunities programme. Industry is doing a great deal. Some of our best firms such as GEC and Marks and Spencer, have programmes of great value. The Minister knows about the Marks and Spencer job creation and youth involvement scheme. About 40 qualified executives are helping various agencies and small businesses. Many voluntary agencies are doing splendid work. I refer to the community services volunteers and a host of others.
Admirable though all that is, it does not get over the fact that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford said the other day outside the House, unemployment is creating two nations. My fear is that many of the current activities by Government or voluntary agencies take on the character of either outdoor or indoor relief and continue to put a stigma on the unemployed person. What is more, I fear that the Minister's suggestion that young people should be driven into State schemes by denying them welfare payments will intensify feelings of dissatisfaction. That must be examined with great care.
That is why I believe that we should turn our attention to the idea of a national service scheme for youth which would involve equally boys from Brixton schools and boys from Eton college. The advocates of such a scheme are scarcely Fascist. They include Kingman Brewster, the ex-president of Yale university, and Professor Ralph Dahrendorf, the director of the London School of Economics. That is why 145 hon. Members signed early - day motion No. 377 entitled "National Community Service" which asks the Government to carry out urgently a feasibility study for introducing a scheme of under-compensated publicly useful service for young people before they embark on their life-time careers.
A feasibility study should take a broad look at the sort of society that Britain must secure. It should not flinch from the hard facts of our social and economic future. It must look at patterns of employment and seek an educational and training structure which will reflect them.
I urge the Government and the Opposition to take a joint approach on this most vital task. As one of my hon. Friends said this afternoon, this is a much bigger issue than any one political party; it involves the whole nation.

Mr. Nick Budgen: Does my right hon. Friend agree that it would almost certainly be better if such a scheme were compulsory for all those who are eligible so that it had the same character as national service in being something that everyone did, not merely those who happened to be unemployed?

Sir Hugh Fraser: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. That is my personal view, which I hold very intensely. Of course, there are those who disagree with me, but to be effective, I believe that eventually—perhaps not immediately—it would have to be compulsory.
I urge the Government and the Opposition to consider the matter. Let us agree that our present training structures are inadequate, let us face the reality of future unemployment, but let us not allow the scale of the problem to paralyse our ability to respond to it. Let us explore the possibility of introducing a period of compulsory service, a year of education for life, designed


to look beyond the bounds of academic success or failure. Let us use that extra year to patch the holes in the basic education of the young, and to mature them to meet the real demands and challenges of adult life. If unemployment is to be a part of the experience of every young person, either his education or some supplementary scheme should be set up to deal with it.
However, the first—and, indeed, the last—thing that we must do is to fight the despair of young people. I am sure that many of us today saw the letter of the 16-year-old in the Daily Mirror, a poem showing the other side of the coin—the determination of young people to fight despair and depression, and, despite the odds, to find the first wrung in the ladder to the future. It is the hope of these kids that the Government must seek to harness. They must take the ideas and optimism of youth and use them to create the society which our conventional measures have so far signally failed to do. We have become too resigned to failure and mediocrity, and too narrow-minded in our approach to national problems. We have large numbers of unemployed young people. We have terrible gaps in the standard of service to the community. Let us bring them together. Our cities and parts of our countryside are caught in a spiral of decay—Northern Ireland, parts of the Midlands, and parts of the East and the North Coast. Let us use the energies of young people to fight against it.
Of course, that will not end unemployment. Nor is it a substitute for jobs. However, we must look for ways to protect our young people from the effects of recession and unemployment, and to keep the social fabric which endemic unemployment will eventually undermine. It is our duty to give young people a sense of community and continuity, and make them aware of new horizons, whatever their immediate problems. We shall ask young people to sacrifice their time and a measure of their personal freedom. In return we must offer them proper help. Above all, we must persuade them that they have a vital place in our national future.

Mr. William Rodgers: The right hon. Member for Stafford and Stone (Sir H. Fraser) said in his opening remarks that this was a very serious debate. He was right. The quality and seriousness of the speeches, certainly after the two speeches from the Front Bench, reflect the extent to which, coming from different roots, we all agree with the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St John-Stevas), who said in his moving speech that unemployment is now the highest priority of the Government.
I confess that that was not always my view. Like many others, I was euphoric through the 1950s and 1960s, and did not anticipate a return to the levels of unemployment that existed before the war, least of all to the human misery caused by them. However, the words in the amendment standing in the name of my hon. Friends and myself about
the acute human distress and the high social and economic costs of unemployment
reflects the feelings of the whole House.
I have referred to the Front Bench speeches not in any way to doubt the sincerity either of the Secretary of State for Employment, whose seriousness of purpose is plain, or that of the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Varley). However, there were times in their speeches

when the House did not reflect the seriousness of the occasion and was more concerned with the traditional dog-fight than with looking for solutions to these problems. We shall find solutions not by calling one another names but by debating the real problems which so far have proved intractable. No one knows how best to solve them, and it is right that we should admit that.
The right hon. Member for Chelmsford spoke about the moral evil of unemployment. That is how all of us should see it. I was born and brought up in Liverpool between the wars, and it was the ugliness, poverty, deprivation, squalor and intolerance of that great city that made me feel that there was a place for me in public life. All of us, in our different ways, have reached that conclusion. However much we are concerned about the other problems that face our nation, the problem of unemployment, with its personal, social, economic and national consequences, is a matter that must concern us all.
I agreed also with the right hon. Member for Chelmsford when he spoke about the desirability of finding common ground. He made two points that I want to emphasise, because I agree with them. He said, first, that the problem that we face, although there are ways in which this Government can deal with them, is not only a domestic affiction but one that afflicts the whole international community. Although inflation in this country is at present higher than it is in the OECD as a whole, and although unemployment in this country is also much higher than it is in many of our partner countries, there can be no solution to unemployment which does not take account of the international dimension. It is the obligation of every British Government to seek to find an international solution, as far as it extends. It would be madness, for example, for Britain to withdraw from the EEC, whatever it shortcomings, in view of the consequences for unemployment in this country.
Secondly, the right hon. Member for Chelmsford said that the problem of unemployment mirrors the shortcomings of British industry. Here the Secretary of State was wholy right. He referred, in perhaps a familiar liturgy, to the uncompetitiveness of British industry. He spoke of higher inflation and lower productivity. He referred also to higher unit costs, particularly the labour element. All of that is true. The problem of unemployment will not be solved, either in this country or internationally, unless Britain is a great deal more competitive than it is today.
We are suffering not from a minor illness, but from something that is much more debilitating. It was right that right hon. and hon. Gentlemen on both sides should draw attention to youth unemployment. It may be obvious to say that unemployment is an acute shock, whenever it comes. Although I am deeply concerned, as are right hon. and hon. Gentlemen, about those who leave school and cannot find jobs, I am also deeply concerned about those who lose their jobs in their late forties early fifties and have no prospect whatsoever of going back to work.
We talk about the desire for greater leisure, the wish for earlier retirement and how the effects of unemployment are cushioned. We must recognise that living standards are higher than they were 50 years ago, but the plain fact is that most people want to work. That should be the starting point for all our policies. We should not make any other assumption and we should seek to give them an opportunity to work.
The Secretary of State's comments on unemployment among young people were a little obscure. I take it that he will be bringing forward a firmer package. I hope that there will be no hindrance in public expenditure terms, although I am the first to admit that no Government can escape the need for priorities in public expenditure.
I should like to see four major developments in providing opportunities for 16-to-18-year-olds which, together, would guarantee every young person over 16 years either education or training up to the age of 18. First, I should like to see introduced educational maintenance allowances, related to family incomes, to encourage young people to stay at school. Some thought must be given to the content and quality of the courses that they undertake, but we should seek to move in that direction.
Secondly, I should like to see an increase in the number of apprenticeships available to school leavers. We must look at relevant skills, bearing in mind the new technologies, and the sensible period for an apprenticeship. We must not simply continue as we have done in the past.
Thirdly, we need better training for those who are fortunate enough to be in work. Successive Governments have talked about training, but I do not believe that we yet have a comprehensive and effective plan for training, not only at apprenticeship level, but for those in work.
Fourthly, under the heading of facilities and opportunities for 16-to-18-year-olds, I hope that there will be an extension of the YOP to enable young people to move from one opportunity to another, including some opportunity to be involved in community service.
Substantial progress can be made under those four headings, although I am more than ready to concede that in the short term such measures are mainly ameliorative. There is no way of ensuring a permanently low level of unemployment if we do not have economic growth and there is no way of achieving economic growth unless we produce goods and services that those at home and abroad want to buy and produce them at a price that they can afford. It is as simple as that.
That means that we must have a positive industrial policy. It was made clear from both sides of the House during the Budget debate that the main shortcoming of the Budget was that the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not place the regeneration of industry at its centre. Within an industrial policy that is relevant to employment, we must have responsible economic management. I concede that neither the Government, in what they have done, nor the Opposition, in what they have promised, have given any indication that they know how to manage our economy better than successive Governments have done over the past 20 years.
Damaging consequences have resulted from the Government's monetary policy, but I do not argue that concern for the money supply can be dropped from the tools of economic management that any Government need to use. It is a question not of "either-or", but of finding the right balance and using all the means at a Government's disposal to ensure at least a minimum of economic growth and to deal with the regulators that always need the finest tuning.
I said in the Budget debate that it was foolish to believe that:
in the long run lower inflation and lower unemployment are conflicting objectives."—[Official Report, 12 March 1981; Vol. 1000, c. 1040.]

If that is so, it is disturbing that there are signs that inflation is beginning to bottom out in double figures. According to the OECD, our inflation rate is 11·7 per cent. It seems unlikely that the Treasury's forecast of a rate of 8 per cent. by mid-1982 will be achieved. That seems too optimistic. I expect inflation to remain in double figures until the end of 1982. If the Prime Minister takes a different view, perhaps she will tell us when she replies to the debate.
The gravest danger is that the fall of the pound will result not in greater competitiveness but in a rise in costs, including wage costs. It is, therefore, right that we should look again at the whole question of an incomes policy. The right hon. Member for Chelmsford mentioned that when he referred to greater coherence in wages and salaries. I was delighted to hear the right hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr Ashley) mention the need to look at the question again.
I greatly regret that Opposition spokesmen have not begun to talk seriously about the need for an incomes policy. The right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) knows that such a policy is necessary and he should be saying so loudly, clearly and regularly. I have the greatest regard for the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Varley), and I agree with much that he said. He should also be saying loudly and clearly that there is no way of managing the economy and getting unemployment down without an incomes policy of one sort or another
The hon. Member for Islington, Central (Mr. Grant), who is on the Opposition Front Bench, has written some excellent articles and first-class pamphlets making the case for an incomes policy. I hope that he will have an early opportunity to say in the House and elsewhere that it is central to economic strategy that we find a way of getting a planned increase in incomes. If we do not do that:, the best endeavours of all Governments will fail.
I am sorry that, if the reports in the press are correct, one of our greatest trade unions, the Transport and General Workers Union, has said that it does not favour an incomes policy. The way to change such views is to debate the issue in public and to stand up and be counted.

Mr. T. W. Urwin: Will the right hon. Gentleman take into account in his advocacy of an incomes policy the fact that there is no possibility of such a policy succeeding unless it is closely allied to a prices and profits policy?

Mr. Rodgers: I agree with the right hon. Gentleman, particularly on a prices policy. We need to look closely at profits, because if they are not earned there will be a shortage of investment which will work its way into the: system and affect opportunities for employment. I certainly agree that the matter must be looked at as a. composite.
The only way that any Government will succeed in that sphere is not by cobbling up a hasty incomes policy in a moment of economic crisis but by working it out seriously in advance, advocating it in Opposition and, coming into Government with a mandate from the electorate for a prices and incomes policy, and perhaps a policy on profits, as part of a total economic package to set before the nation. That is a formula for success.
I should be gratefully warmed in my expectations of the outcome of the debate if from both the Opposition Front


Bench and the right hon. Lady the Prime Minister we had a plain statement that a strategy for incomes has a part to play in the economic management which is crucial to a much lower level of unemployment than that from which we now suffer.

Mr. Michael Morris: The right hon. Member for Stockton (Mr. Rodgers) will excuse me if I do not debate incomes policy.
It is not news that we face the highest level of unemployment for 50 years, nor is it news that it is forecast that there will be 3 million unemployed by the turn of the year, and some forecasters suggest 5 million by the 1990s. However, it would be news if any hon. Member were able to say that man's needs in this country, let alone the needs of the Third world, have now been fulfilled, and therefore, we can plan for greater leisure. Therefore, the House is right to ask why this great evil has now hit us. Do we also have to ask that soulful question "Where on earth are the jobs to come from?"
I believe that we can and should again plan for full employment. I believe that we can get full employment with genuine jobs. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, in her broad strategy over the past two years, has laid the foundations to achieve that. However, like any form of foundation, they are not attractive to look at, although they are fundamental to moving forward.
In the past two years my right hon. Friend has been trying to restore people's faith in money. She knows, as I know—and as I believe most hon. Members know—that it is the stability of money that is the basis of the Western world. Two-thirds of hon. Members know what they saw when they looked over the precipice of hyperinflation, as we did in 1975. There was not one hon. Member in the House at that time who liked what he saw.
My right hon. Friend has often referred to our international competitiveness; or, to put it more vividly, she does not accept—and I do not accept—that the United Kingdom's share of world trade will automatically continue to decline in the forthcoming years. There is no given law that says that our share of world trade must keep on declining. The obverse of the question is how one returns to increasing one's share of the trade. What can we do in the meantime? Many hon. Members this afternoon have referred to what we can do to ameliorate the problems which are associated with unemployment. As the right hon. Member for Stockton said, growth has to be one of the answers. However, that is too simplistic an answer, as he was the first to admit. The scale of the task is daunting. The Cambridge Economic Policy Group, in an article in the Lloyds Bank Review, suggested that it needed a 5 per cent. sustained growth to get unemployment down to an acceptable ¾ million by the mid-1980s. To use statistics to turn that round and to put it slightly more attractively, it would require a 1 per cent. rise in output above the gain in productivity.
There are those who have claimed in the past that North Sea oil would offer a panacea to take us through this difficult stage. I suggest that all of us in the House are now a little wiser. The contribution to the gross national product by North Sea oil is running at about ½ per cent. Therefore, it does not offer the total panacea. However, it removes one fundamental constraint which has been on

the country since the war. It provides room for manoeuvre in terms of the balance of payments. Since the war, whenever this country has begun to get growth, we have had a balance of payments crisis and, therefore, we have had a stop-go policy. What North Sea oil is doing, and will continue to do for the rest of this decade, is to give us a degree of flexibility to go for growth.
I ask myself whether the Government's policies are moving us towards growth. I suggest that, casting aside one's own prejudices, the basic elements are being laid. When we look back on this period in about 10 years' time, we shall recognise that in the last two years my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has restored the competitiveness of British industry in a way that no other Prime Minister has done this century. To that extent, the key determinant is there.
There are areas where we have to do more. We need not a compromise but urgently to recognise the changed basis of international trade. There must be many hon. Members who, like myself, have worked overseas for British companies—I hope that there are. When I worked overseas, it was a question of one company competing with another. In those days, one never had to involve one Government or another. However, those days are gone. Today, trading requires a fusion of interest between Government and big industry. I should like to see more support for the export effort of this country from my right hon. Friend and her Cabinet. I want to see more urgency put into that than we have seen heretofore.

Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: In what form?

Mr. Morris: The British Overseas Trade Board could be given a complete shake up, for a start.
Perhaps more importantly, I believe that we need to look at import substitution. We have to ask ourselves some questions. Why do we have such a high import elasticity in this country? Why is it so much easier for foreign competitors to sell in the United Kingdom that it apparently is for our companies to sell elsewhere? Why do we accept, and have accepted, such an adverse balance of trade with the Japanese and with certain parts of Comecon? Why do we pay so little attention to import substitution?
If we could tackle the combined dimensions of increased exports and increased import substitution, we would begin to go some way towards getting the necessary element of growth. If we could manage to control Government borrowing—in particular, the borrowing of nationalised industries—the present healthy savings ratio, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) referred, could be turned to financing British industry instead of financing the public sector.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: The hon. Gentleman has taken the debate into an interesting area. What sort of machinery would he wish to see constructed to help the import substitution effort?

Mr. Morris: I shall come to that point in a few moments. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will listen carefully.
If I have faith in the future, I also recognise the tragic circumstances of the present unemployment. If my optimism is to be well founded, what policies should we


be carrying out now? The Government are, naturally, both a significant employer in their own right and in local government, and an indirect employer through the nationalised industries, the regional incentive schemes and a host of activities. It is a fact of life that, on the whole, that degree of activity is not the most efficient way to use labour, nor is it particularly accountable to the House. The longer that I serve on the Public Accounts Committee, the more convinced I become of that lack of accountability. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment has already undertaken a number of initiatives for youngsters. His determination to improve the schemes should be welcomed.
What should we do about import substitution? We should look long and hard at energy conservation. In the North-East there is a small trial scheme for energy conservation in homes. There should be a country-wide scheme, and we should make resources available for it. We would get an almost immediate response, both in construction labour and in a saving on import bills. The private sector should be given tax incentives for energy conservation. We need a massive programme to ensure that private industry is given every incentive to save energy. We need to consider the way in which we tax motor vehicles. We talk about saving fuel and moving towards smaller cars. There should be a differential tax system that would encourage people to use fuel-efficient vehicles.
I am sure that hon. Members can think of other ways to save energy. I cannot for the life of me think why we do not give greater encouragement in recycling products. We could abolish VAT on recycled products, which would have a direct effect on imports.
During this transitional period I hope that the Government will be a little braver with some of their excellent initiatives, for example, the start-up scheme. When we have such a scheme, where the concept is right, we should be braver and say that it does not matter what sort of job it provides because any job is a good job. We should not differentiate between manufacturing jobs, distribution jobs and service jobs. I want the encouragement of "Young Employees Scheme" to be considered again. It has great merit.
I want to see some flexibility between the Treasury and the Department of Employment in getting the money at present paid out in unemployment benefits recycled into paying those who do a job. The vehicle for that may be local authorities. I hope that an embryonic scheme on which I have been working will make a small contribution in that area.
It is too easy to be pessimistic. Britain owes a debt of gratitude to the Government, especially the Cabinet, for creating a greater sense of realism about the need for Britain to be competitive. I want to see that degree of competitiveness put to good effect so that we can obtain the growth that we need, and get our people back to work.

Mr. Cyril Smith: I have attended most employment, or unemployment, debates in the House during the nine years that I have been a Member. I accept that such debates are part of the proper democratic function, and serve a purpose to that end. However, I have yet to see such a debate take one person off the dole queue. I suspect that today's debate will be no exception.
There have been some constructive speeches. I had expected more of the political football knockabout to which we are often subjected when debating unemployment. Perhaps, before the debate ends we shall have a little more of that. I suspect that it will happen when the Front Bench spokesmen reply to the debate. We heard a little of it in the opening speeches, and some more during the speech of the hon. Member for Northampton, South (Mr. Morris). Clearly his attitude was that, whatever his Government did, it was right, and it was his job as a Back Bencher to defend it.
During these debates we are always told by the Opposition that unemployment is the fault of the Conservative Government. We usually hear the Conservative reply—which I have not the slightest doubt we shall hear later—that the conquering of inflation is the first priority, and that, although we are all deeply concerned about unemployment, inflation must be tackled first, and until then we must be prepared to put up with a continuing rise in unemployment.
I say in all seriousness, and not in a spirit of sarcasm, that I appreciate the fact that the Prime Minister has taken the trouble to sit through the whole of the debate, listening to the speeches from both sides of the House. Her reply will be all better for that. I sincerely appreciate her presence.
The Government did not invent unemployment. During the time of the last Labour Government, when the present Leader of the Opposition had responsibility for employment matters, unemployment doubled. I hope that when the right hon. Gentleman replies to the debate he will say what he will do when next in Government that he was clearly unable to do last time he was in Government. Alternatively, perhaps he will say what he will do next time that he did not do last time—[Interruption.] If he intends to do the same as he did last time, why will it work next time when it clearly it did not work last time?—[Interruption] Opposition Members, from sedentary positions want to know what effect the Lib-Lab pact had on unemployment. I am talking about a time that did not include the period of the Lib-Lab pact. During the time about which I am speaking the Labour Government had a majority. They lost their majority because of by-elections that occurred after the level of unemployment had doubled. Opposition Members cannot argue that the doubling of unemployment had anything to do with the Lib-Lab pact. Whatever its causes, it happened. Today, we must hear about the Labour Party's new policies for solving the problem of unemployment.

Mr. Kilroy-Silk: The hon. Gentleman made great play about the political football knockabout that has not happened but which he suspects may happen. He immediately launched into a political knockabout. He chided my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition about the doubling of unemployment during the period of office of the last Labour Government. It did double, but it did not reach anything like the 3 million level that it is today. It was decreasing, not increasing. The majority held by the last Labour Government was held for only nine months at most. Even then, it was a slender majority of one—

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member for Ormskirk (Mr. Kilroy-Silk) has been trying to catch my eye. It seems that he is making his speech now.

Mr. Kilroy-Silk: I wanted to make the hon. Member for Rochdale (Mr. Smith)—

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman is making a speech now.

Mr. Smith: The essential feature was the doubling of unemployment rather than the then Government's majority. I was side-tracked by the many sedentary remarks about the Lib-Lab pact, which had nothing to do with the doubling of unemployment.
The Government have increased the number of unemployed by about 1 million since they took office. That is something with which we cannot be expected to live. The Government must take meaningful action to try to reduce the number of unemployed.
We cannot accept that one in two of school leavers will have no job. Equally, the Government must give their attention to those aged 50 years or more who are unemployed. That is a terrible age at which to become unemployed. Many of those who are in that position lose all hope. The wives of men in their fifties who are unemployed have wept to me about their husbands' unemployment and its effect on their households. I am in favour of doing all that we can to help school leavers, but we must not lose sight of those in their fifties who are becoming unemployed.
We have heard some hon. Members talk about the tragedy of the South-East. In one area there is 7·7 per cent. unemployment. I would settle for that percentage in my constituency. In the past two years unemployment in my constituency has increased from 5·9 per cent. to 16 per cent.
It is insulting to management to be told that it has been grossly inefficient over the years. It is implied that management has employed hundreds of thousands of people over and above that which it required to produce the goods that it could sell. I do not accept that industry has been overmanned to the extent that it is now necessary to shed 3 million people before it can achieve efficiency.
I understand the problems of the South-East and I sympathise with them. However, the problems of the North and the North-West are acute. My hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Wainwright) informed me by way of a memo that unemployment in Oldham and Shaw increased by 133 per cent. in one year.

Mr. James Hamilton: In the Strathclyde region of Scotland 20 per cent. of the insurable population is unemployed. In Lanarkshire, of which I represent part, there is 19·6 per cent. unemployment.

Mr. Smith: I am aware of those percentages. The hon. Gentleman's intervention strengthens my argument.
What should we be doing in the short term? Liberals would reflate the economy considerably. We believe that it is necessary to invest in industries that have a future. Therefore, we welcome the Government's move towards the electrification of the railways. That is a sensible measure. If we are to witness a great recovery and a time when everything will be well, there will be a need for an efficient communication system. Efficient transportation must be vital in that context. The electrification of the railways must be worth undertaking in terms of its futuristic possibilities and probabilities.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: rose—

Mr. Smith: Anyone who uses the railway system must be aware of the state of the rolling stock. That is part of a labour-intensive industry. Reference has already been made to energy conservation and road construction. There are many areas in which we could invest.
Investment in non-futuristic industries is unwise even if the demands that are made are based on the ability to clout and on muscle power. There is no sense in investing hundreds of millions of pounds in coal seams that will be worked out in two or three years. The money would be better invested in industries that have a long-term future rather than in short-term coal seams merely because certain sections of our community have more muscle than others.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: The hon. Gentleman says that he would like investment to take place in long-term product industries. In the last Parliament, why did all the Liberal Members vote against the proposition that assistance under section 8 of the Industry Act 1972 should be given to Thames Board Mills Ltd., a measure that was introduced by the Labour Government? Why did his colleagues oppose that industrial development project?

Mr. Smith: I have no idea. Without notice of the question I do not know. I should have to ascertain where the company was situated, how many jobs were involved and many other details.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: There were 150 jobs at stake.

Mr. Smith: We are talking of unemployment of 2,600,000. However, the hon. Gentleman asks me to answer a specific question about 150 being declared unemployed at a mill which, I presume, has something to do with his constituency, an issue that goes back many years.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: Does the hon. Gentleman realise that £82 million was involved?

Mr. Smith: I view with some apprehension the suggestions that have been made about reducing the wages of young people and apprentices.

Mr. John Wells: rose—

Mr. Smith: My company employs apprentices. I am doubtful whether a reduction of their wages would make my company more competitive. That argument ignores many other factors that are relevant to the training of apprentices. These factors include the number of skilled men that one employs, the ability to train young people and apprentices, the ability to absorb the work that they produce, which is sometimes badly produced, and the ability to inspect it and to put it right. I have doubts about the wild suggestion that if we reduced the wages of apprentices in industry our companies would be more competitive and we would increase our ability to sell abroad.
The abolition of the national insurance surcharge would make a considerable contribution to increasing the efficiency of firms and employers. It is a 3½ per cent. direct tax on jobs and employment that was introduced by the Labour Government. That could be done by a one-clause Bill, and it would be a good piece of labour legislation for a Tory Government. The surcharge taxes exports, not imports; it hits smaller firms, because they are more labour-intensive; it hits all the major trades—tourism, building, shipping and manufacturing.
I understand that the Government perhaps could not abolish the surcharge in one go, but they could reduce it for the time being and abolish it later. The Government should at least consider abolishing it initially for all employees under the age of 21 to encourage more youth employment.
The Government could give more positive leads to companies on how to claim from the EEC funds. Small companies do not have knowledge of all the grants that are available from the EEC and how to get them. The grants should be channelled throughout the country rather than to particular parts. Earlier we spoke of the problems of the North, the North-West and Scotland as opposed to the South and the South-East. Of the money that the United Kingdom receives from, say, the agriculture fund, only 5 per cent. goes to the North-West region. That is perhaps explicable because it is not a highly agricultural area, but as agriculture accounts for such a large share of the EEC budget that distribution should be examined.
Reference has already been made to the need forconsiderable expansion of the training and retraining programmes. I am delighted that the Government, encouraged by the Prime Minister, saw fit to instal microcomputers into all secondary schools. But that equipment will be of no use unless the education authorities have the wherewithal to train teachers in the use of that equipment so that they in turn can teach the children. When I received the Prime Minister's circular, I got in touch with all the secondary schools in my constituency, and every headmaster said that he was delighted that the equipment would be made available but asked for some in-service training courses to enable the teachers to learn how to use it.

Mr. John Butcher: In the light of what the hon. Gentleman says, I hope that he will join other members of the parliamentary information technology committee in welcoming the decision made by the Secretary of State for Education to set up regional training centres and regional resource centres. I am sure that the whole House would welcome the hon. Gentleman's comments.

Mr. Smith: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I hope that hon. Members always welcome my comments.
There is need for new industrial structures which recognise the necessity for capital and labour to be involved in decision making. Industrial participation is far too important a subject to enter into at great length today. I simply put it into the record.
I heard with great interest what was said about small factory units. I have been trying to persuade the Government to put at least one small factory unit in my constituency, which has a high level of unemployment. The Secretary of State for Industry wrote to me to say that the Government had no more money for this purpose but were trying to get private funding. I hope that the Government will spend their money on advance factories better than did the Labour Government. I have visited Ebbw Vale, the constituency of the Leader of the Opposition, where I was dismayed to see that half of the advance factories there have been idle ever since they were built. I hope that the Government will get advance factory units built in areas of high unemployment where the ability to use them is evident at the time of building.
It has been said that there is need to create a partnership between industry, Government and the trade unions to

implement a prices and incomes strategy. I subscribe to that view. Will the Government try to find out the professional people who are being paid to be unemployed who could be used for the benefit of the nation. I cannot understand the logic, for example, of school teachers being on the dole when from the same money they could be paid to teach. I accept that there are few professions to which that argument can be applied, but the teaching profession is one.
I should like the Government to consider setting up a committee of inquiry across parties with representatives from inside and outside the House to consider employment in the long term. In this age of high technology, with the advent of the microchip, in the long term we shall have a surplus of labour.
The use of leisure time, the encouragement of the arts, training and educational programmes, shorter working weeks, earlier retirement for men, pay for sixth formers and job sharing are all matters which require attention. There are jobs which are now paid for but which in future must be done voluntarily to reduce public expenditure in one direction for use in another. A future Parliament will have to face all these changes.
The Government must have the political courage to say that they understand that unemployment is an evil and in the short term they will try to resolve it, but in the long term people must either work for fewer hours or be willing to share their jobs. The ability to use leisure is as important as the ability to use vocational training. Until we move towards that objective, I suspect that unemployment is a permanent with which we shall have to learn to live.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Ernest Armstrong): I have to tell the House that the Front Bench speakers are hoping to catch my eye at 9 o'clock. As 21 Back Benchers wish to speak, I ask for some restraint.

Mr. Alan Haselhurst: In no debate on unemployment, whether in Opposition or Government time, have we heard from the Opposition any positive remedy for this problem. There is too much cat-calling from the Opposition Front Bench on this subject, when Labour's record is deplorable. In Opposition the Labour Party had time to study the subject in greater depth and with rather more objectivity with a view to reaching a sensible solution.
I am not asking the Government to relax their pressure for improving productivity within industry. Such pressure is long overdue and it is necessary for it to continue, but I do ask the Government to understand how essential it is to deal with the consequences of making industry more efficient.
In current circumstances, we are bound to face a large increase in unemployment.
I disagree with the hon. Member for Rochdale (Mr. Smith) when he says that industry did not unneccesarily employ labour in the past. I know of too many occasions when productivity has been allowed to get seriously out of line with that of firms in competitor countries. Something needed to be done. However, we must deal with the consequences of bringing about an improvement. It is clearly socially right to do so, and it is also economically right, because a trained workforce is necessary for a


modernised industry. It is also politically right. I agree with the hon. Member for Eton and Slough (Miss Lestor) that there is a danger that many people will begin to reject the democratic processes and those that represent them if we do not come up with a socially acceptable answer.
The problem of unemployment will not be solved in three years. That is obvious now, even if it was not obvious a few months ago. The economic upturn that we all crave cannot come with sufficient speed and force seriously to dent present unemployment figures. In any case, it should not mean a return to employing 20 people to do a job that 10 can well do.
I do not believe that everything will be all right or all wrong. The upturn may solve our problems by absorbing back into useful employment the vast majority of the unemployed, but I doubt it; nor do I subscribe to the doomsday philosophy that says that it is impossible to bring people back to employment on a large scale.
It is remarkable that there is so much calm, despite high unemployment—although it is, perhaps, an uneasy calm. It might almost seem that the country has adapted to the present level of unemployment, with the temptation to conclude that the work ethic is weakening and that people are prepared to settle for a different lifestyle or, indeed, have even already found a way to sustain it. Such theories are not sensible. It is the calm before a serious political storm. The vast majority of the unemployed, young or old, want work. It is possible to find a sufficient number of jobs, albeit in the service sector, to fulfil the expectations of most of them. We are not looking for a great panacea, and I am not impressed by descriptions of the post-industrial society to which we are supposed to have moved. I am tempted to paraphrase what the Prime Minister said the other night: "Hell, no. We have only just got to being an industrial society". I hope that during my political life we shall make a success of that.
We need adjustments. We need them to bring the size of the labour force more in line with the number of jobs likely to be available. However, adjustments can be made in an attractive, useful and constructive package, which would also be politically saleable.
The consultative document "A New Training Initiative", is one of the most encouraging documents to come from the Government for some time. I compliment my right hon. Friends on warmly endorsing a document published under the imprimatur of the Manpower Services Commission, but I wonder whether it goes far enough. It suggests a possible period of training for all young people for as long as a year, but to get the measure of the problem the period would probably have to be two years. Training must be universal for young people between the ages of 16 and 18, and should be organised on an area basis, which is the preferred suggestion at paragraph 46.
Some may ask what the point is in training people for a year or two if there is still no prospect of employment at the end of that time. However, it cannot be argued that unemployment will be so awful that there will still be no prospect of jobs at the end of two years and at the same time that nothing should be done about it. People with the worst fears about unemployment should be especially interested in finding constructive and sensible occupations for young people. Putting young people between 16 and

18 into training schemes will also have an impact upon the hopes of regaining employment of older people out of work.
I prefer a system of that kind, with a strong industry relationship, to anything of a national service variety, although I respect the motives of those who talk of national community service. A period of national community service could be part of the two-year programme.
The second factor in a new training scheme concerns finding the money. There must be a better way of spending the money that we are presently pouring out in a variety of ways to help the unemployed. I hope that training will remain industry based, in which case there would not need to be a phenomenal increase in overheads to divert the money now spent on unemployment and social security benefits to training allowances or tax remissions. At paragraph 41 the consultative document mentions the concept of a training allowance. I hope that it will be seriously considered by industry, the unions and the Government.
I endorse what my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Mr. Morris) said. Tax remission, as an element in the encouragement of "Young Employees Scheme" put forward by Colt International, could also be considered as an effective and not over-expensive way to help to get people into employment.
Let us recognise that training must be given to all kinds of people for all manner of reasons and for all sorts of activities. The French and Germans set a good example. We should learn from such an example to take constructive steps for our young people. Measures of the kind suggested in the new training initiative document would complete the picture in the modernisation of industry, to which the Government have set their hand, and ease the changes that will take place in its shape and pattern. More training is right and necessary. Let us get on with it quickly and boldly, and not be ashamed to take credit for a new initiative. We must consult, but there comes a time when an ounce of decision is worth 1,000 consultative documents.

Mr. Julius Silverman: I estimate that in the past two years the various industrial undertakings in my constituency have had about 11,000 redundancies, so I am tempted to deal with unemployment generally, about which I have spoken previously. However, I shall concentrate in the time at my disposal on a specific matter, which I and other Birmingham Members discussed yesterday with the Minister of State, Department of Employment.
Seven hundred workers formerly employed by Ansell's brewery and formerly on strike, are today deprived of unemployment benefit, which is a serious matter. If the Department of Employment deems a worker to be on strike, the DHSS, in administering supplementary benefit, gives benefits only to the family and not to the striker. The net consequence is that 700 families, most of whom are on social security because they have no unemployment benefit, are living on very much less than the poverty rate at the present time. Perhaps I may therefore devote some time to the history of that case.
Ansell's brewery is a well-known landmark in the city of Birmingham. That brewery has now ceased to operate and will close altogether in a few months. Until January this year, its beer production was only 2 or 3 per cent. less


than it had been in the past. Yet suddenly, in January, the company decided to introduce a four-day week, without any consultation with the workers in the brewery. It was told that the four-day week would not work, given the nature of brewing, if it was intended to produce the same quantity of beer in four days as had been produced in a full working week.
The four-day week did not work, and because of new practices that were introduced, the workers went on strike. Having gone on strike, they were eventually told that the four-day week proposal was being withdrawn. They were prepared to withdraw the strike action, but the brewery then said that they could come back only on an entirely different basis of working practice, which amounted in substance to a new contract of employment. As a result, the strike continued.
I am told by the trade unionists concerned that the differences in practice would have meant a substantial fall in their remuneration, amounting to about 30 per cent. I am not in a position to say whether that is in fact so, but that is what I was told.
Things then began to accelerate. On 29 January, only about two weeks after the strike, notices of dismissal were sent to all the workers in the factory. They were then offered terms of re-engagement on a new basis and a new contract. Those terms were not accepted, and on 3 February the company announced its decision to close the brewery. Lest anyone should think that this was merely a ploy in the negotiations, I should point out that it has since been made perfectly clear by Ansell's and also by Allied Breweries that that decision was irrevocable.
Birmingham Labour Members of Parliament went to see the company in Birmingham and Allied Breweries in London.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: Is that the same Allied Breweries which gives large funds to the Tory Party?

Mr. Silverman: It is, but I am not dealing with that aspect at the moment.
Both companies assured us that the decision was irrevocable. They said the same in letters to the Department of Employment. That was made quite clear.
In view of he history of the case, one cannot help thinking that the decision to close the brewery had far more to do with the commercial interests of the company than it had to do with the strike, for the following reasons. The brewery is now using spare capacity at Burton and using its depots in Birmingham to distribute beer manufactured at Burton instead of at Aston in Birmingham. The Aston brewery will therefore remain a gaunt and empty building, a memory and recollection of better times.
Eventually the strike was settled on 4 June. Some of the men were taken back into employment in the depots, but for 700 the dismissal has taken effect and they are still unemployed. When they go for unemployment benefit, they are told that they can have no unemployment benefit because the stoppage is still going on, because the factory is closed and that is a result or consequence of the strike. Whether it is a consequence of the strike is at any rate arguable.
We wanted to see the Secretary of State, but he was not available. I make no complaint about that. We therefore saw the Minister of State and his advisers about the denial of unemloyment benefit. We were told that it was the decision of the legal advisers of the Department that if a

factory closed because of, or after, an industrial dispute, the workers there were not entitled to unemployment pay, for an indefinite period, until eventually they obtained fresh employment and qualified for it again.
I told the Minister of State that I regarded that as an outrageous decision, especially as in the present situation in Birmingham the prospect of obtaining employment for most of those people is nil. They are therefore still unemployed, but without unemployment pay. Because of the practice of the Health and Social Security Department they obtain only supplementary benefit or social security benefit on a much lower than poverty basis. That is outrageous.
If a person is dismissed for gross misconduct, he merely loses his unemployment pay for six weeks. Yet these people are told that their unemployment benefit is to be taken away indefinitely—perhaps for the rest of their lives, if they cannot obtain jobs—because they are said to be on strike. What is the Secretary of State's opinion of that, and what does he intend to do about it? It is a completely outrageous situation. I therefore considered it worth my time to bring this important issue before the House, although it is a restricted issue in a major debate.
On this basis, the workers would be deprived of benefit, incidentally, even if it were not a strike but an industrial dispute provoked by the employer. Indeed, my own view is that, after a few days, this case became a lock-out and not a strike. Nevertheless, the position would be the same even if the workers were not at fault at all. According to that decision, if the closure took place those people would be deprived of unemployment benefit.
That factory used to be in my constituency. It is now in that of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Miss Wright), who for various reasons is not available to take part in the debate. Nevertheless, many workers in my constituency were employed there, as were others in other Birmingham constituencies, so they are all interested in this case.
I believe that in a similar case, that of Birmetals, about seven months ago, the commissioner decided that the workers were entitled to unemployment pay from the date on which the factory was closed. I hope that it will still be possible to reach a similar decision in the Ansell case.
For the moment, I am concerned about the fact that these people have suffered enormous hardship for three weeks. I am sure that all hon. Members are concerned about that, and I demand that the Secretary of State gives his urgent attention to this problem.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Rev. Ian Paisley.

Rev. Ian Paisley: rose—

Mr. Urwin: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I draw your attention to what I consider to be a grave anomaly arising from the responsibility of the Chair properly to observe the rights of minority parties in the House. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Silverman) is only the fourth member of the official Opposition to have participated in the debate. However, we have had a speech lasting 24 minutes from the representative of the Liberal Party—which has only two handfuls of Members in the House—and another lasting 17 minutes from the right hon. Member for Stockton (Mr. Rodgers) representing the Social Democratic Party.

Mr. Kilroy-Silk: And neither is here now.

Mr. Urwin: Indeed. The hon. Member for Antrim, North (Rev. Ian Paisley) has just been called, and I have no doubt that, in line with your responsibilities, Mr. Deputy Speaker, you will be compelled to call a representative of the Scottish National Party, which has only two Members in the House. In my view, a gross injustice has been done to members of the official Opposition, because it appears that no speaking time is to be taken from the Conservative Party.

Mr. Gordon Wilson: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. As my name has been invoked indirectly, it must be made clear that those of us who have spoken, or wish to speak, for the minority parties have been present for the whole of the debate, unlike the right hon. Member for Houghton-le-Spring (Mr. Urwin). Furthermore, at one stage only five members of the official Opposition were present, and that number was dwarfed by the number of Conservative Members in attendance.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: This is a continuing concern to the Chair. In nine minutes, the debate will have run for four hours, during which there will have been 12 speeches. Many more hon. Members still wish to speak. This matter is carefully considered, but it represents a difficult situation for the Chair.

Rev. Ian Paisley: I wish to highlight the appalling unemployment situation that has developed in Northern Ireland. With the publishing of the recent figures, Northern Ireland unfortunately retains its place as the worst area of unemployment in the United Kingdom.
An hon. Member has deplored the fact that in his constituency unemployment now stands at more than 11 per cent. However, in Northern Ireland, there are areas where unemployment is 34, 35 and 36 per cent. I should be happy to settle for 11 per cent. unemployment, although I would regret even that.
We can all quote figures and forget that behind each statistic is a human being—a person whose hopes have been dashed, whose expectation has been cut off and whose home and family has been put under intense stress and strain. In some cases, that has resulted in dreadful tragedies.
The House would do well to take note of the Northern Ireland figures. Approximately 104,000 people are now unemployed—18 per cent. of the total working population. Male unemployment stands at 73,340, or 22·3 per cent. of the total. Female unemployment stands at 30,493, or 12·3 per cent. The percentages in certain areas of the Province are appalling. For example, in Strabane unemployment now stands at 34·8 per cent.; Cookstown, 32 per cent.; Dungannon, 31·1 per cent. The present total shows an increase of almost 31,000 compared on the same period last year—19,013 school leavers having joined the dole queue.
However, the real figure is much worse, because recent redundancies are not included in the latest figures. The list is depressing, including STC at Monkstown, the Courtaulds Campsie factory at Londonderry, Goodyear at Craigavon and Harland and Wolff.
I should like to bring two specific matters to the attention of the House relating to two sectors of industry that in the past have provided vast employment to the

people of Northern Ireland. The first is our basic industry, agriculture. More people in Northern Ireland are employed in agriculture than in any other sector of employment. However, the House should note the startling figures. In 1978, the net income of farmers amounted to £64 million. In the following year, it dropped to £33 million and in 1980 it fell to £9 million. That reflects the terrible tragedy that has overtaken Northern Ireland agriculture. In real terms, the figures represent a fall of 60 per cent. in 1979 and a fall of 80 per cent. in 1980.
Textiles was another important sector that employed Northern Ireland people. In June 1977, the textile industry employed 32,000 people, but by March this year the figure had fallen to 20,900. The figures for the man-made fibres part of the industry are also depressing. In June 1977, it employed almost 9,000 people and today the number has fallen to 4,500. Therefore, Northern Ireland is the darkest and blackest spot in the United Kingdom in terms of unemployment.
This is an issue on which all the political interests in Northern Ireland are united. I am glad that the Prime Minister is present. The people of Northern Ireland will be happy to note that the right hon. Lady has taken time from her onerous duties to be in the House to listen to the debate. The Prime Minister and I have had many differences in the past, and will probably have many more, but I should like her to know that the people of Northern Ireland appreciate that she has taken time off to listen to the debate.
The EEC Parliament recently debated and passed a certain report which I ask the Prime Minister to study carefully. The fact that it was supported by the Leader of the SDLP, the representative of the Ulster Unionists and myself shows that there is consensus and agreement about Northern Ireland's economy.
I should also like to draw attention to the question of additionality of money coming from the EEC. The money that is allocated to Northern Ireland should be given in total to the Province. At present, Whitehall keeps up to 60 per cent. of it. That blockage should be unclogged, and the money should flow directly to the areas for which it has been allocated.
I promised to speak for 12 minutes. Although I do not think that I have preached for 12 minutes. I shall sit down now.

Mr. Robert Kilroy-Silk: I listened intently to the speech made by the Secretary of State for Employment in the hope of some sign that he would make a contribution towards reducing the level of unemployment. Although the right hon. Gentleman lamented the increase that has almost been the daily pattern since the Conservative Party took office, and although he made his traditional noises about the intolerably high level of unemployment, he did not put forward one substantial, positive, constructive suggestion for dealing with the real problem of unemployment.
The right hon. Gentleman spoke only about creating new youth opportunities schemes and about creating false, unreal jobs. He offered ameliorative, palliative steps to deal with the situation. The right hon. Gentleman knows—just as hon. Members and the public know—that what is at stake is not an additional training project, youth opportunities programme or additional places for community industry—desirable and welcome though such


provision may be—but the Government's economic policies. The point at stake is whether the Government will change them and stop the disastrous and cumulative economic decline that they have embarked upon.
Just as other hon. Members have, I shall draw attention to the level of unemployment in my area. Today, 118,000 people are unemployed on Merseyside. That is an unemployment rate of 17·2 per cent. A small town, Kirkby in my constituency, has 7,068 unemployed people. Some of the estates in that town have an unemployment rate of 40 per cent.
In an intervention, I cited a figure to the Secretary of State. I should point out that the Ormskirk travel-to-work area does not include Kirkby or the Birds Eye factory to which he referred. There is an unemployment figure there of 6,197. That is equivalent to 20·2 per cent. That unemployment has not been caused by the sort of factors that he referred to in his reply to my intervention. Those figures are serious and alarming to anyone deeply concerned about their social and human consequences. Nevertheless, they mask the individuals that lie behind them. For example, they mask the fact that there are 20,000 young unemployed people on Merseyside. I have cited that figure because considerable mention has been made of the plight of the young. More than 3,000 of those young people have been unemployed for more than 52 weeks.
In the relatively small town of Kirkby 1,277 young people are unemployed. More than 200 of them have been unemployed for over 52 weeks. The point is made not by the numbers or the consequences alone, but by the sheer desolation and lack of hope felt by many of those concerned. Let us turn to the numbers of those chasing jobs, compared with the number of vacancies available. If one looks at the standard industrial classification of 27 occupations one finds that only 11 of those 27 industrial classifications have vacancies in Kirkby. Indeed, the total of vacancies for the 27 industrial occupations comes to a mere 47. Therefore, 7,000 people are chasing 47 jobs.
The individual industrial classifications give the lie to the Prime Minister's suggestion that people are unwilling to work and that if they had the enterprise and energy—which the right hon. Lady presumably displays—to move elsewhere, they would find jobs waiting for them. In Ormskirk, there are 162 unemployed construction workers, yet there are no vacancies in Ormskirk. If those workers go down the road to the other part of my constituency, where the Birds Eye factory is situated—in accordance with the Prime Minister's suggestion that they should look for jobs—they will join a further 986 unemployed construction workers chasing three vacancies. If those construction workers go 10 or 15 miles further afield, to Liverpool or to the Wirral, they will—taking Merseyside as a whole—join 16,829 unemployed building workers. However, only 86 jobs are available.
Those facts are a terrifying indictment of the Government's economic policies and of the Prime Minister's easy, complacent suggestion that if only people looked for work, they would find it. Similar figures apply to the distribution industry. In Ormskirk 182 distribution workers are chasing nil vacancies. In Kirby, 560 workers are chasing five vacancies. Again, in the chemical industry, 85 people are unemployed in Ormskirk yet there are no vacancies there. In Kirby there are 127 unemployed

chemical workers but no vacancies. On Merseyside there are 2,251 unemployed chemical industry workers, but only 36 vacancies.
Such figures clearly demonstrate the terrifying and horrendous waste of human skill, of resources, of abilities and aptitudes that is caused by such mass unemployment. Many hon. Members, not least Conservative Members, have pointed out that unmet needs exist both in Britain and abroad. It is intolerable and unacceptable that there should be about 16,000 unemployed construction workers on Merseyside when houses are unfit for human habitation, when hospitals are falling down, when new roads need to be built and when schools need to be replaced. In my area alone there is a clear need for construction work. However, the men and women who have the skill and ability to meet those needs are idle through no fault of their own.
No sensible nation should conduct its affairs in a way that wastes human resources on such a scale when there are unmet needs both at home and, in particular, in the Third world. Such a waste is unacceptable and incomprehensible. No sensible country would want to waste its human and natural resources in the way that they are so callously and criminally being wasted. No sensible country would wish to court the potential dangers to the social fabric and political institutions that have been alluded to by many hon. Members, not least by the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas).
For all the pious remarks made by the Secretary of State for Employment and his bedfellow the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the Government continue with their obsessive, almost callous disregard for the increasing number of men, women and young people who have involuntarily and unnecessarily become unemployed. It is no good the Secretary of State for unemployment—honest, decent and compassionate though I believe him to be—going round and telling individual hon. Members or journalists privately, with the occasional nod and wink, that he does not really believe in the Government's economic policies, that he disavows them and that everything would be all right if it were not for the stubborn, obstinate, dogmatic, recalcitrance of the Prime Minister. Ultimately, he cannot escape responsibility for the policies that he has voted for and that he is supporting and sustaining. As much as any other Minister or Conservative Member, the right hon. Gentleman is as culpable as the Prime Minister for what is happening. He cannot wash his guilty hands of that.

Mr. Urwin: rose—

Mr. Kilroy-Silk: I should like to give way but I am pressed for time and I know my hon. Friend also wishes to speak. If unemployment is a moral issue, as the right hon. Member for Chelmsford and his hon. Friends have said, the Secretary of State—who regards himself as honourable—should resign. He knows full well that although the Government's economic policies are not the only cause of unemployment—no hon. Member would be so stupid as to pretend otherwise—much of our unemployment is the direct result of the blind, dogmatic economic policies that the Government have pursued.
Courtaulds in Aintree—the Prime Minister admitted this on another occasion—closed not because the work force was inadequate, not because it produced an inferior product, not because of low productivity or an absence of


investment, but because it was destroyed by the Government's economic policies. Many factories in my constituency have suffered similarly. The high exchange rate, the high interest rates and the policies that have led to a domestic downturn in the economy caused that closure. Those 1,500 men and women, now on the dole in Merseyside, were formerly in good productive long-term jobs at Courtaulds and are on the dole because of the Government's economic policies and they know it. That is important.
Many hon. Members keep referring to the 1930s and saying that things are different now because people have redundancy payments, a tolerable amount of unemployment pay or supplementary benefit. That is true but what is fundamentally different today is that in the 1930s most people did not know that there could be a different economic system. They believed, as Governments believed, that unemployment was a curse of the economy over which they had no control. People no longer believe that. They now know that there is an alternative and that it is not necessary for them to be idle, for their lives and those of their children to be wasted and to face a future of desolation and humiliation. They know that the Government have the power, if they choose to use that power, to put them usefully to work in building a constructive and positive community. Yet they know that the Government refuse to embark on those policies.
The Government will wreak terrible havoc on the community and on the people being used as pawns in the Government's economic policy. Whatever the Secretary of State might like to believe or pretend to say, they are being used as weapons in the economic armoury of the Government. I do not suggest that the Government necessarily say callously and enthusiastically that they want to make "X" thousand more unemployed. I am sure that it does not happen in that crude fashion, but the Government know that their policies will lead to an extra 10,000 here, an extra 100,000 there and an extra 1 million in the long run. They know that that is the consequence of the cuts in public expenditure, the tight control on the money supply, the cash limits in the public sector and they accept those consequences. In that sense, if in no other, the Government are using the people, especially the unemployed, as a weapon in their economic armoury.
Like other hon. Members, I am a deep and profound believer in our political institutions and in the way our society functions. I know from my experience of my constituency, which has the highest level of juvenile unemployment in the United Kingdom, that a deep sense of bitterness and resentment is being created and engendered in the young people. Immediately they leave school they are consigned to something called the scrap heap. They are shown a society that cares so little for them and their attitudes that it cannot find a useful place for them. They are treated, not necessarily deliberately but by implication—that does not matter, because the message is still the same—as unimportant. They feel that they do not count and that society and the Government do not care enough about them and their future to want to provide them with decent worthwhile employment. That will have terrifying consequences for the future of our social fabric and our political institutions.
It is crucially important that the Government change their economic policies. It is not sufficient for the

Secretary of State to give us more well-intentioned but merely palliative solutions to the problem. He must get down to the root causes, which lie in the Government's economic policies. Unless and until the right hon. Gentleman and the Prime Minister are prepared to embark on a planned growth of public expenditure, which will improve the quality of life as well as provide worthwhile employment for our fellow citizens, we shall not solve the economic problem and the serious problem of unemployment.
If the Government are unwilling or unable to do that job, they should give way to a party and a Government that are capable of doing it.

Mr. John Butcher: In his opening remarks the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Varley) drew attention to the spectacular deterioration in employment which has occurred in the West Midlands. I hope that the House will forgive me if I detain colleagues and hon. Members for a few brief moments to consider the Coventry complexion within the pattern of unemployment in that region.
We have a number of messages to give and a number of lessons to learn. If I look down a checklist of household name companies to see what has happened to them in the past 15 months, I hope that the House will agree that there is much to be seen that points to future policy considerations.
British Leyland will have received £1 billion in Government assistance over two years. That surely is not the act of a Government who do not care for jobs and the maintenance of a viable motor industry. We also know that the Government wrote off £6 million in debts to the Triumph motor cycle company. That is not the act of a Government who do not care. Behind-the-scenes assistance from the Government assured Massey-Ferguson of, shall we say, a lessening of its commitment to pay $48 million in export credit guarantees.
Looking further afield, especially into the engineering industry, hon. Members will know that the Alfred Herbert machine tool company had a difficult period, was taken over by the National Enterprise Board and was subsequently divested by the NEB. It is now being supervised by a new management team in the form of Tooling Investments to the extent that the Herbert CNC lathe is now restored to its proper position as a market leader in that line of machine tool engineering.
The GEC company, especially GEC Telecommunications, will benefit from British Telecommunications orders to make System X telephone exchanges and will continue to benefit from Government contracts in the forefront of information technology.
In passing, I should draw the attention of the Secretary of State to an imaginative work-sharing scheme at GEC which involves a system of pairing two young people who share a working week between them at the place of work in GEC, taking advantage of existing work experience programme measures, sharing the overheads—most important of all, the cost—of the company which it would otherwise have had to meet, and meeting a number of objections that trade unionists have hitherto held that work-sharing schemes either involve a cheap labour element or would deprive other trade unionists of work.


For all those reasons, I commend that scheme to my right hon. Friend. He is no doubt aware that information is already in his Department for his preliminary assessment.
Much comment has been made about the need to restructure our economy. At the risk of continuing my somewhat parochial comments, I want to refer to one small company to see what the term "restructuring" has meant for it. The company concerned is called the Reliance Sheet Metal Works Ltd. in Coventry. In 1973, it was in a vulnerable position. It was a traditional supplier of pressings to the motor industry. It had three major customers and those three customers accounted for approximately 85 per cent. of the company's turnover, which was about £90,000. It employed 24 manual employees and the wages paid were significantly below the national average for the industry. I repeat that this was a company which would have been vulnerable to the pressures of any downturn in demand, the pressures of being over-dependent on one particular industry—in other words, the pressures of the last two years.
It is interesting to consider what has happened since management made certain decisions in that company. Today, through diversification, the company now has 20—not three—major customers, and not one of those customers is taking more than 5 per cent. of the trade of the company. There has been massive investment. About £1 million has been used to purchase new heavy presses. I am delighted to report that they are British heavy presses—an article of equipment in which British manufacturers still excel. Productivity has vastly increased. Originally there were 24 employees; now there are 45. Their jobs are less vulnerable. Instead of having a turnover of £90,000 with 24 employees, the company has a turnover of £2 million with 45 employees.
That, surely, is what we mean by restructuring within a company, and it must be the firm hope of every hon. Member that this sort of trend can be encouraged within the economy as a whole on a macro level. In the engineering industry, it means moving up into higher value products. It means diversification, better marketing, and taking advantage of short term currency restrictions.
But it is the Government's role simply to set the background against which these management decisions can be made, and it is my view, having listened to many colleagues today, that the pre-conditions for economic growth are there, that inflation is falling, that the terms of trade may be moving in our favour, that costs are coming down, that productivity is increasing, and that there is a great deal of money sloshing around the economy, trying to find a home.
It is surely a function of this debate to assess the measures that we should undertake to ensure that the revival takes place, and I regret that from the Opposition Benches we have seen precious little by way of a positive contribution in that regard.
If my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) were present, I would say to him that I do not agree that there will necessarily be a shift from industry to services within our economy. That was the conventional wisdom five or six years ago but we can no longer make that cosy assumption. It is precisely because information technology now exists, and precisely because it is the service industries that have made the greatest use of it that the number of vacancies in service industries will not increase as was hitherto projected.
By the same token, any party which encourages a move away from industry—and from heavy industry at that, if need be—is risking the loss of the sector which is the major labour-intensive employer. There will always be a role for that kind of industry in our economy, but we may find that the trend will be reversed and that in our very British way we shall move back to doing those things that we are best at—small batch production among highly skilled small teams of workers.
I find myself a little puzzled by references in this Chamber to information technology. I have tried, as hon. Members will know, to establish my credentials in this regard in other debates, but I would commend to the House a report of the Advisory Council for Applied Research and Development—ACARD—which is now over a year old and on which precious little action has been taken. It is entitled "Research and Development—a Public Sector Purchasing Policy". It is right in line with Government strategy and argues that we should lift much of the in-house research and development within our public utilities out of those public utilities and put it into the private sector supplier companies, which would probably stand a better chance of manufacturing large volumes of goods suitable for the export market and not simply for the domestic requirements of our nationalised industries. In so doing, we inadvertently but consciously reduce the public sector borrowing requirement, so it might help in two respects.
The Government are massive purchasers of equipment. They should be—but regrettably are not—massive purchasers of the products of information technology. The business of Government is the collection, management and dissemination of information, yet Government Departments are probably tragically under-computerised. Surely a Government interested in reducing the payroll size in the public sector should look at this central question.
I waited for any proposals or alternative policies from the right hon. Member for Chesterfield. He mentioned railway modernisation. He did not mention, in the context of railway modernisation, what price he would extract for the large investment funds that he would channel in that direction for electrification, when we all know that British Rail has an appalling productivity record. I know that it has shed massive amounts of labour, but there are still some large abuses of labour practices in British Rail.
The right hon. Gentleman mentioned council house building. If I were looking for a major force for inertia within the British labour market, it would be the large numbers of our skilled and unskilled workers who are incarcerated in council housing estates, and who cannot get a transfer, because our feudal—albeit local government-based system of housing denies them freedom of movement.
The hon. Member for Eton and Slough (Miss Lestor) referred to a few factors in relation to the lack of employment opportunities for young people. If she had read the speech that my right hon. Friend made in Germany, in which he said that a third-year German apprentice gets 40 per cent. of his final wage, whereas in the United Kingdom that figure is more like 80 per vent., she would have been helping the young people of Slough.
The hon. Lady said that Conservatives had asserted that if inflation could be reduced, unemployment would go down. We did not say that. We said that reducing inflation


was the precondition for reducing long-term unemployment. The hon. Lady did not think in the medium term or the long term. She thought, as ever, in the short term. She thought of the instant answer.
The right hon. Member for Huyton (Sir H. Wilson) once said that a week is a long time in politics. I suspect that that rather cynical view of decision making in this place has prevailed in many of the past decisions about employment.
My right hon. Friend mentioned a significant figure when he said that the previous Labour Administration spent £3½ billion in reducing unemployment by 150,000 people. What would the Opposition spend, to buy another short term advantage, if pro rata £7 billion is a good enough deal to buy 300,000 off the dole queues albeit only for the next 12 months or so?
Our problem as Members of Parliament is that it is very difficult for us to face the young person or the family man who has just been made redundant and says, "I lost my job yesterday, I need one tomorrow." It is difficult to say to that person, "Would you mind thinking in the medium term?" His need is immediate and it is great.
We all face that dilemma, and we all care. I hope that when we face it we shall have the honesty to say to the person who is demanding an instant solution that the correct solution, for the first time in our lives, is to think of the medium term, to rectify all the damage and put right all the papering over the cracks that has taken place over the last 20 years. If we were to do that, the young person or family man might have a future for his children.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bernard Weatherill): Order. I am sorry to make yet another appeal for brevity, but as the House knows, many hon. Members wish to take part in the debate. With only 50 minutes remaining before the wind-up speeches, I therefore make another appeal for reasonably short speeches.

Dr. Edmund Marshall: Many hon. Members have quoted figures in their description of the problem of unemployment in their constituencies, regionally or nationally. I wish to focus attention on what I believe are shortcomings in the statistics available describing the evil problem of unemployment.
In the first place, the numbers included on the unemployment register—these are the figures most quoted—are not necessarily all the people who are seeking work and who are technically unemployed. The main group not included on the unemployment register consists of many married women who lose their jobs through redundancy or for other reasons, who still seek work, but who do not register as unemployed for the simple reason that they do not qualify for unemployment benefit because they have paid a reduced national insurance contribution. They cannot see why they should register as unemployed. Consequently, they are not included in the figures. I hope that greater effort will be made to try to persuade married women who are seeking work to register, so providing a better guage of the size of the unemployment problem nationally and in particular localities.
There appears to be some lack of clarity in statistics dealing with the problem of unemployed school leavers.

I agree that if one delves deeply enough into all the figures available in relation to school leavers, one can gain some measure of the problem. One can ensure that the school leavers are included in the totals to which one refers. It is, however, difficult to see always to what extent the problem of unemployment among young people is included in the figures quoted globally. I hope that no attempt will be made to fudge the issue more generally in any new schemes to help young unemployed people. I applaud all the measures taken through youth opportunities and other schemes mentioned by the Secretary of State today. I hope, however, that they will not lead to the classification of people who are technically out of long-term employment on a different basis from the general unemployment totals.
The second main shortcoming relates to statistics of unemployment for particular localities. Although unemployed people are registered according to where they live, and although the figures for those unemployed are produced monthly for each employment office area, the figures of people in work are calculated on the basis not of where they live but where they work. Although totals of unemployed people are available for many employment office areas, these cannot be compared with the total work force actually living in the area, so that one cannot make a straightforward comparison to discover the proper percentage rate of unemployment in the area.
The Department of Employment tries to deal with this difficulty by including such employment office areas in wider travel-to-work areas. A travel-to-work area is, in general, a self-contained labour market in which the great majority of the working population lives and the great majority of the workers who live in the area also work there. In other words, people live and work within the same travel-to-work area.
The difficulty arises when pockets of severe unemployment occur in a particular part of a travel-to-work area. It is a real problem trying to measure the severity of unemployment in these pockets. It seems to me that greater attention has to be paid to these pockets. In these days of high petrol costs, one cannot expect people always to be able to travel a distance to find employment.
My attention has been drawn to this problem through consideration of areas within my constituency. Two parts of the Goole constituency are employment office areas included in wider travel-to-work areas. The Knottingley employment office, where this month there are 925 people registered as unemployed, is included in the wider Castleford travel-to-work area. The rate of unemployment in the Castleford travel-to-work area is 12 per cent. This gives no gauge of the severity of unemployment in Knottingley. It is a matter to which further attention must be given. The unemployment figures for Knottingley have increased from 351 in July 1979 to 925 at present, an increase of over 160 per cent. A severe problem exists to which I hope attention will be given.
At the other end of my constituency, the employment office area of Thorne is included in the wider Doncaster travel-to-work area. The problem again arises that I am unable to calculate with any degree of precision the severity of the unemployment problem at Thorne. On 11 June, there were 2,532 people registered as unemployed at Thorne, an increase of over 200 on the previous month. However, because the area is included in the wider


Doncaster travel-to-work-area, one is not able to arrive at a particular percentage of the rate of unemployment at Thorne.
I have discussed the problem with Ministers. I had a meeting with the Prime Minister who gave her time and attention in listening to what I had to say. As a result of the meeting, I received a letter from the Minister for Industry and Information Technology in which he says yet again that it is not possible for the Department of Employment to quote the unemployment rate for areas smaller than travel-to-work areas. This means that the Department refuses to come to grips with the problem of trying to gauge how severe unemployment is in pockets where it is believed to be a serious problem.
In his letter to me the Minister says:
In the case of Thorne 41% of the workers who live in the area travel to jobs outside it, and Thorne is thus far from qualifying as a TTWA on its own.
It is not surprising that 41 per cent. of workers who live in Thorne have to travel outside the area, simply because they cannot find jobs nearer home. The use of travel-to-work areas as operative units for determining whether an area should be designated as assisted involves a circular argument. It fails to recognise that in the middle of small pockets of unemployment there must be a reasonable way of working out how serious the situation is there.
More work must be done by the Department of Employment so that it knows exactly where the working population lives. Perhaps there should be a census of employment annually so that we can work out how many employed people live in each employment office area. From that we shall be able to gauge how serious the unemployment problem is in each area.

Mr. David Madel: I shall not deal with the question of obtaining detailed information locally. However, I welcome the Secretary of State's statement that, although the Government are committed to 440,000 places in the youth opportunities programme this year, the figure will be exceeded by 100,000 and they will meet that in full. The fact that the numbers have swelled does not diminish the Government's concern. The lesson that we can draw from the French elections last week is that people in the West are now accustomed to high levels of unemployment. However, they will not put up with a Government who have run out of ideas and become indifferent. We have not become indifferent, nor have we run out of ideas.
I welcome in particular the commitment on the youth opportunities programme. One of our difficulties is that almost 1½ million jobs in the manufacturing sector of the economy disappeared between 1966 and 1976. New jobs in the public sector service industries did not keep pace. Most of the vanishing jobs were for men. However, fewer women were employed in those industries. In the last 15 years the country has been trying desperately to run up an escalator which has been going down. We have not been able to keep pace with the alteration in the economy.
In the 1960s we were obsessed with our declining share of world markets. In the 1970s we were obsessed with our declining share of our home market. I do not believe that that was because the goods that we produced and the prices that we charged were wrong or out of line with foreign competition. In the 1970s we suffered from industrial disputes, overmanning and the poor pay of production

engineers. No single cause can be blamed. In the 1970s we found it difficult to fend off foreign competition. That made more difficult rational discussion between management and unions about future employment levels.
It is vital for employers to use the time of the recession to engage in constructive discussion with the unions on manning levels, wages and holidays. Above all, we must discuss time off for retraining. Employers must not use the opportunity to push the unions to the wall. If they do that, when the economy changes and improvements take place, we shall slide back into the difficulties that we experienced in the 1960s and early 1970s.
We should now examine two aspects of pay. We should examine the possibility of "synchropay" in the public sector so that we avoid leap-frogging. We should also re-examine the question of no-strike clauses in the public utilities. We should look at that rationally and reasonably.
I welcome in particular the two recent documents from the Manpower Services Commission on the new training initiative and the open tech. Many hon. Members have mentioned the increasing problem of adults who have lost their jobs. The training opportunity scheme courses are proving successful but they cannot meet the scale and range of requirements because they are restricted to unemployed people.
With our present technology, and since it will improve, we can now widen the opportunities for training to adults who are in work but who could be at risk if they are not retrained and therefore do not have an opportunity to change their jobs. The scheme must respond to the market place where key new skills are needed. Most in demand are skills in microelectronics and computers. The signs are that they will be growth industries.
The MSC must ensure that people now in work have the opportunity and the time off for retraining, in addition to ensuring that people who are out of work are retrained. The Government have a role as big employers. I hope that the Government will ensure that their employees can make use of the facilities, especially of the open tech when it gets going.
The open tech should consider three groups of adults if it is to get the new training right. First, it must supplement companies' training schemes which do not fully meet the need of the new skills. Secondly, the open tech must meet the needs of people in work who are willing and able to retrain outside working hours. Thirdly, it must meet the needs of the unemployed who missed skills during their working lives, and particularly, as the hon. Member for Goole (Dr. Marshall) said, married women who are retrained or want to go to jobs hitherto the preserve of men.
Thus, the open tech should be directed at adults who are about to suffer employment difficulties or who are actually out of work. It is crucial that employers should be reasonable and release people to learn the new skills and to retrain. There will be plenty of opportunity for recruitment of people into the open tech as teachers and learners. In other words, when employers release people, they are not only releasing people to learn new skills, bus: also to take part in teaching in the new tech.
I want to say a word about the other aspect of unemployment—school leavers and the youth opportunities programme. Last year, the Manpower Services Commission said on the subject of YOP that it hoped to increase the number of young people on a work experience


scheme from the present 40 per cent. who got off-the-jobtraining and further education up to 100 per cent. What was being offered was not only work experience on employers' premises, but an opportunity of further education and off-the-job training. That will be difficult for the MSC, because each time it has a scheme it is overtaken by the increase in the number of people unemployed.
However, I hope that the MSC will be able to meet that 100 per cent. target, so that young people doing these work experience schemes may have in addition off-the-job training and further education. Inevitably, the MSC will look to local education authorities for help with further education opportunities. The local education authorities will have to look carefully at their teacher numbers, because the MSC will look to some of those teachers to help in this further education opportunity as part of the youth opportunities programme.
The problem of further education inevitably brings into focus the special problem of the school curriculum. We must improve the in-service training of teachers. Central Government will decide what they will do for technical education. Central Government must decide now—if they are to intervene in the school curriculum, particularly that of the 14 to 16-year-olds—whether the Secretary of State for Education and Science should have more power to intervene with the school curriculum, and whether the inspectorate should have some responsibility for doing something about the quality of the school curriculum for 14 to 16-year-olds.
In my opinion, the answer to both those questions is "Yes". The Secretary of State and the inspectorate should intervene if our young people are to take advantage of these courses and training when they leave school at 16. Therefore, we shall have to move towards central funding of in-service training, with specific grants earmarked for specific projects in certain areas.
We are faced with the need to improvise and innovate in this desperately difficult time of recession. If we get higher productivity, machines can work round the clock, and more people will have the opportunity of working on those machines. However, that will fall to the ground if, in so doing, we do not achieve higher productivity from the greater use of machines. We must make a more flexible use of the education system.
The Government are desperately trying to hold the line and keep a sense of balance and stability in our society, while grappling with the desperately difficult problem of unemployment. They must continue to do their level best to keep poverty out of unemployment. We must never shrink from helping financially those who are unemployed, while we are engaged in the desperate race to reorganise training and further opportunities for adults and, above all, in getting the curriculum right for the 14 to 16-year-olds.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Mr. Tom McNally.

Mr. Gordon Wilson: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. So that I may decide whether to remain in the Chamber, can you tell me whether the debate is only about unemployment in England or about unemployment in Scotland and Wales as well? So far, every speaker has been drawn from an English constituency.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: That is an ingenious point of order to which the hon. Gentleman already knows the answer. I do not think that I need to reply.

Mr. Tom McNally: This is a debate about unemployment in the whole of the United Kingdom. The level of unemployment in the United Kingdom might be decidedly lower if the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. Wilson) had voted differently two years ago when he had the opportunity to keep in power a Labour Government who were fighting for jobs in Scotland.

Mr. Gordon Wilson: You betrayed Scotland.

Mr. McNally: The hon. Gentleman betrayed Scotland by his vote.

Mr. Wilson: You betrayed Scotland.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Have you ever betrayed Scotland?

Mr. Speaker: I do not think that the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. Wilson) was referring to me.

Mr. Wilson: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I apologise. My barrage was directed not at you, but at an hon. Member who deserved it.

Mr. McNally: We know, Mr. Speaker, when shafts go home.
In my maiden speech two years ago I referred to the doubts of my electorate about whether there were in the leafy groves of Cheadle and Bramhall entrepreneurs just waiting to be released to provide jobs to prove the truth of the Saatchi and Saatchi poster that said that Labour was not working.
The Secretary of State squirmed earlier, but he must face up to the fact that his party fought the election on the clear understanding that it would cut unemployment and create jobs. Those of us who argued that that was a bogus prospectus have been proved tragically right.
We knew that there were problems about creating jobs. The right hon. Gentleman referred to studies by the Labour Government in the mid-1970s. We knew then that getting greater productivity with existing plant would result in a loss of jobs. We knew that the technological revolution would cost jobs and we knew that the age structure of our population would bring more people onto the labour market. We knew that those problems would face any Government in the 1980s.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Foot) and others in charge of employment matters at that time tried to face up to the problems. They did not pass them off, as did the Conservative Opposition, as a problem in our tax structure which could be solved by liberating vigorous entrepreneurs. On top of the structural and technical problems that are recognised by any reasonable person, we have had Government policies that have doubled unemployment.
One of the witticisms that cost the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) his job was his naming the Prime Minister "Tina", an acronym for "There Is No Alternative". We were told time and again that there was no alternative. The name is no longer fashionable. Tina no longer rules so surely on the Government Benches. We are hearing hints that perhaps there is an alternative and a possibility of using the years of world recession to put people with ability and talent to work and


to invest in the infrastructure to prepare for the upturn. That sensible approach has been urged by Labour Members for two years or more.
The past two years have been wasted. People have become unemployed and during the recession we should have been preparing our industry and infrastructure for the upturn. That is the real indictment of the Government. It is not an indictment of the Secretary of State for Employment. He is the wrong man for that. We know that we shall get a hot cup of tea, a cigarette and some sympathy from the right hon. Gentleman. That is why he is in the job. However, his right hon. Friends the Secretary of State for Industry, who boasts that he does not have an industrial strategy and that he does not have a regional strategy, and the Secretary of State for Trade, who surrounds himself with Manchester Liberals and allows various sectors of our industry to go down the plughole, are the guilty men.
It is no use the Government sending along the Secretary of State for Employment with his sweet sympathy and alibi that it is not really his fault. The Government's trade and industry policies are at the heart of the failure of their economic strategy, and they know it.
In regional policies, for example, we have seen the ridiculous sabotage and emasculation of the National Enterprise Board. How much better would the Government have been able to deal with the problem that has faced ICL, if, in a fit of ideological vindictiveness, they had not removed the NEB's involvement in ICL and in regional planning?
Over the last two years, we have had not so much an economic and industrial strategy as ideological tunnel vision. The Guardian of 19 June, looking at what has happened during the past two years of recession, but also of oil wealth, states:
It is difficult to draw a general conclusion … except that a surprising amount of the wealth created by the North Sea is being spent at home (often on imported goods) and a significant proportion of what is left is finding its way abroad by one route or another.
In the discussions which were prevalent in the 1970s, we thought about the problem of the technological changes which we would face, the need for greater productivity and the new people coming on to the employment market. The debate was about how we would use that once-for-all opportunity which the North Sea gave us. Much of the argument then was that we would use that wealth to re-equip our industry and to train and retrain our people in the industries of the 1980s and 1990s. However, we find that, two years on, it is going either to overseas investment or to buying imported goods. The Prime Minister prides herself on the title of the the Iron Lady. I believe that she would be better described as Tokyo Rose.
The two years when Britain could have begun to face the inevitable challenges of the 1980s and 1990s, have been frittered away by the Prime Minister and her henchmen in the Cabinet latching themselves on to a single, narrow ideological solution to Britain's problems. Two years on we hear from speaker after speaker on Conservative Benches that perhaps we should look at some investment in public enterprise, perhaps we should look at training and perhaps we should look at trying to restructure the British economy, using some of the examples of Japan, which has used Government procurement policy. However, it is two wasted years too late. That is why, on the Opposition Benches and throughout the country, there

is no confidence in the Government who, after two years of waste and of ruining many lives, now come along with apologies.

Mr. Gordon Wilson: It is significant that on such an occasion—when unemployment in Scotland has crashed through the 305,000 barrier—it has taken us until now to debate the position in Scotland. It is sad that there have been only two Scottish Labour Members of Parliament in the House this evening, despite the opportunity that hon. Members have had of putting the case regarding their country and their constituencies.
Scotland is an oil-producing country. In 1974 the unemployment level stood at 85,000. By 1975 it had almost doubled. Currently, 305,000 are unemployed. That is well above the 3 million barrier, in proportional terms, for the United Kingdom as a whole. In 1974 the Scottish National Party coined a slogan "Rich Scots, poor British". That was the choice for the Scottish people. It turned out to be true because the Scots have become very poor British indeed.

Mr. James Hamilton: I am a Scots Member of Parliament representing a Scottish constituency and I have been in the Chamber throughout the debate, as have other hon. Members representing Scottish constituencies. Is the hon. Gentleman prepared to say now that what he said in 1974 held true in 1979, when the SNP lost 11 seats in Scotland?

Mr. Wilson: The hon. Gentleman is exaggerating the number of seats that were lost. Undoubtedly, we did lose some seats at that time. Unfortunately, we did not use that slogan in 1979. The SNP would have been in a far stronger position if it had.
Employment fell faster in Scotland than in the United Kingdom as a whole in the year to June 1980. Scotland entered the present recession in a worse position. than England. Whereas in England there had been some revival in the economy between 1976 and 1979, in Scotland there was total stagnation of output levels. Low demand was a dominant constraint which resulted in output levels in Scotland in 1980 being at their lowest for a decade. The construction industry, an important source of employment in Scotland, was one of the worst hit areas. The position has become worse with falling house starts and reduced investment.
My constituency has an unemployment level of 15½ per cent., with 17·3 per cent. male unemployment. The Robb Caledon shipbuilding yard has been condemned to death by British Shipbuilders. I say quite plainly that it has been murdered by British Shipbuilders which has never given it the opportunity of orders that would allow it to compete. It is an example of man's inhumanity to man. When the Secretary of State for Scotland was approached about the matter he passed the buck to British Shipbuilders and refused to take responsibility, despite the fact that the Government could have taken action through public service orders or by giving cash aid, as they did for Harland and Wolff.
The outlook in Scotland is gloomy. The surveys by the Confederation of British Industry and the Scottish Council (Development and Industry) show depressed investment intentions for the remainder of the year. The Scottish


Council Research Institute report estimates that investment will fall by 31 per cent. on last year, and that about 60,000 jobs will disappear during 1981.
I understand and appreciate that in some other parts of Britain those areas that have not yet felt the unfortunate effects of unemployment are now concerned about the present increase in unemployment. Scotland has suffered in another way. Much of our unemployment is caused not by short-time working, but by closures. As hon. Members are aware, once factory gates close it will be more difficult to recover that employment when the recession ends. There is little sign in Scotland of any upturn in the economy. The Government obdurately refuse to admit that their economic strategy for Scotland lies in ruins.
Unemployment figures in many other European countries put the Government's performance to shame. Statistics for April 1981 show that the current rate of unemployment in Switzerland is 0·3 per cent., in Norway 1·8 per cent. and in Austria 2·2 per cent. It appears that the smaller the country, the lower the unemployment. Perhaps small countries do best and large countries, especially those relics of a dying empire, suffer most. Norway is perhaps an excellent example. The United Kingdom and Norway share oil resources. In terms of population and resources Norway is far better off than we are.

Mr. Peter Fraser: Nonsense.

Mr. Wilson: If the hon. Gentleman says "Nonsense", it is clear that he knows nothing about Norway and nothing about Scotland.

Mr. Fraser: I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman is concerned about unemployment in Scotland. As he represents part of Dundee, will he make it clear to the people of Scotland where he stands over what happened on Monday, when my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland opened possibly the most exciting innovative enterprise that Dundee has seen for many years? I refer to the 3-D camera undertaking that is being set up by American money and enterprise. The hon. Gentleman is well aware of the impact that the demonstration had on those who came from America to put their money where their mouths were. Will he make it clear what he thought of the demonstration that confronted those who were prepared to invest in Scotland?

Mr. Wilson: I was at the same occasion, which was a good one for Dundee. I think that the demonstration was inappropriate becaue it was directed against the Secretary of State and not against the development at Timex.
A staggering 17·7 per cent. of the recent increase in overall unemployment in Great Britain has been in Scotland and 13·1 per cent. of school leavers on the dole in Great Britain are Scottish. There are 27,400 school leavers unemployed in Scotland and there are virtually no vacancies.
What are the answers? The case that was put before the House by the Secretary of State for Employment was full of kind words and except in one respect it seemed to offer no hope for the future. I was marginally encouraged by his reference to the need for improved training. However, he was unwilling to give any dates. In other respects the solution that he envisaged appeared not to meet the gravity of the problem that we face.
About nine months ago the Scottish National Party produced a three-year plan to relieve unemployment. It stated that there should be an oil fund for Scotland and that the oil wealth should be used to initiate a programme of public works, including the building of hospitals, housing, modernisation of housing, sheltered housing, building, house insulation, railway electrification and a large-scale programme of apprenticeships. My party wants also to see an expansion of the role of the Scottish Development Agency.
The cost of unemployment in Scotland in 1980 was £964 million in direct benefits plus loss of output estimated at £723 million. Notwithstanding Scotland's oil resources, the calculations of the benefit of reflation and reinvestment are such that surely any Government would want to take action, especially if they are concerned about the social problems that long-term unemployment is causing. I ask that the Government consider proposals of that sort. If they do not, they will be slamming the door on the faces of those in Scotland, especially the younger people, who are desperately anxious either to keep their jobs or to have jobs in future.
I was saddened that the Secretary of State was not prepared to announce a scheme under which apprenticeships would be subsidised either for the first year or second year, or both years, to enable manufacturers, who are facing difficulties, to take on young people and give them essential training. Unless the Government are prepared to do that, there may be skill bottlenecks in the next two, three or four years, if and when unemployment recedes with the ending of the recession.
The youth opportunities scheme is useful in itself. However, it is regarded by many young people as a con. They feel that they are being used as cheap labour. The scheme provides them with a period of work experience, but sometimes that experience is frustrating and is not able sufficiently to excite them or to give them an appetite for work. The young people are taken on for a period, they learn nothing and then they are discarded. The youth opportunities scheme should be re-examined and replaced by the training and apprenticeship proposals I have suggested.
Unemployment in Scotland climbed from 85,000 to 164,000 under the Labour Government, which showed that a Labour Government gave no protection to Scotland. It has climbed to 305,000 under the Conservative Government, which shows that the Conservative Government are not interested in what is happening in Scotland and are prepared to allow this drastic increase to occur. It also shows that the Labour Party in Scotland has provided no protection as an opposition party and has been unable to get anything out of the Government.
With the record that Westminster has in demolishing the viability of the Scottish economy, for me and my party the independent solution is the only one which will give Scots, young and old, the opportunity to develop their own country and reach a reasonable state of prosperity.

Mr. Michael Ancram: All who represent Scottish constituencies will share the dismay expressed by the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. Wilson) about the 305,000 people who are unemployed in Scotland. We all appreciate the hardship and loss of self-respect that such unemployment entails. If we care about


the unemployed, we can show that care not by sloganising, not by political attacks, but by coming forward with solutions.
I have listened throughout the debate to the speeches made by Opposition Members. I have found it increasingly depressing. At no stage in any Opposition speech did I hear any answers put forward to solve the problem of unemployment. We have had slogans and political mouthings, but we have had no answers that hold water. In many ways we have had the reverse. By turning the debate into a political slanging match, by drawing grim and gory pictures, Opposition Members are adding to the lack of confidence and hope without which a real solution to the problem will not be found. Their only achievement will be further to undermine the prospects of economic recovery upon which job recovery and restoration must depend.
In view of the Scottish unemployment figures, I have looked round the Chamber to see how many Scottish Labour Members of Parliament were trying to catch your eye, Mr. Speaker. Not one have I noticed. They speak in the streets, they attack the Government in the streets, but they do not seek to speak here because they have no answer to give.

Mr. John Home Robertson: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. It is clear that the hon. Gentleman is not giving way.

Mr. Ancram: We have heard over the past months descriptions of Scotland being an industrial wasteland. We have heard veiled threats of civil disorder. This does nothing to persuade or attract industry to Scotland. Talk of that sort can only work in the opposite direction and dissuade firms from doing so.
Ultimately the solution must lie—inasmuch as it is in the hands of Government or politicians—in creating an atmosphere of stability and confidence which will provide a sound investment base for new jobs and new industries. Too often we in Scotland have regarded ourselves as the poor relation, the thick end of the handout wedge. Too often we fail to sell our potential, and we fail without reason, because the potential exists. We have seen it in the way that we have responded to the challenge of oil. We have seen it in the growth of the microtechnological industries for which we are fast becoming the United Kingdom base. We are seeing it still at this time of recession.
Apart from last month's unemployment figures, for which there were special reasons such as Linwood, over the past months our rate of unemployment has been significantly less than that for the remainder of the United Kingdom. That may be cold comfort, but, if confidence is based on trends, this is an important trend in terms of that much needed restoration of confidence.
We are seeing it, too, in the success stories which we have in Scotland and which all of us on both sides of the House, if we care about Scotland, should be putting in our show window to demonstrate what we can do. There are success stories like Ballantynes in Bonnyrigg, which in 1978 expanded its facilities, expecting to create 85 new jobs, but, because of the success of its enterprise, 200 have already been created and more are expected. There are success stories like National Semiconductor (UK) Ltd.,

where the parent company invested £45 million in a five-year expansion programme. When complete, the new Greenock plant will be one of the most modern semiconductor manufacturing plants in Europe, and the work force, which started at 650, will rise to 2,000 by 1984.
There are also success stories in a different way, like John Brown Engineering Ltd. at Clydebank, which was recently in such trouble, but has now received £55 million worth of orders from Iraq, India and other countries. That firm, which was about to lay people off, has rescinded the redundancies. Significantly—and this bears out what the Secretary of State said—the company ascribed part of its success to a moderate single figure wages settlement by its work force. Perhaps the number of jobs are small, but each is an individual new job that did not exist before, and each is a real job with a future. From such small acorns great oak trees can grow.
Never have we needed more a combined drive by everyone who cares to create confidence in Scotland, which is in the interests of politicians, trade unionists, businesses and, most of all, the unemployed. It may not be good politics for Oppositions, but it would be far better news for the unemployed than anything we have heard so far today.
I hope that what I have said in no way detracts from the seriousness of the problem, particularly in Scotland, because we have our particular and special problems. We have a history of high unemployment. We are at a competitive disadvantage in many areas because of our distance from the markets of supply and demand. I hope that in the efforts and measures of direct assistance that the Secretary of State mentioned the Government will keep the special needs of Scotland in mind.
In conclusion, I support the motion because it faces facts. It accepts that in the long term unemployment cannot be purchased away, and, even if it could, we should only be sowing the seeds of its regeneration. The motion accepts that, by and large, jobs are created by industry and not by Governments, as other hon. Members have said. Indeed, the ability of Governments to create jobs is severely limited. The Government's task is to give industry the atmosphere within which jobs can be created, and the basis of that must be the control of inflation. I am confident that the Government will achieve that.

Mr. Michael Foot: It would be churlish of me not to acknowledge at the beginning that the Government have conceded our frequent demand for them to provide time for a debate. I am glad that they did so. I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for attending almost the whole of the debate to listen to what we have to say. I give formal notice here and now that we shall, of course, require similar debates on all similar occasions. The next will be in July when we shall have to consider the figures again.
I have heard most of the debate, and I believe that everyone agrees that the House should debate the question frequently. It is not true that our debates have no effect. They have a good chance of focusing the country's mind on what is far and away the greatest domestic issue facing the nation. I believe that large numbers of Members, certainly Opposition Members, but I believe also Conservative Members, would have wished to take part in the debate had time been available. I therefore repeat the


Opposition's view that unemployment figures of this scale and horror should be debated every month when they are published until we see a substantial reduction. So far, there has been no sign either from the Government or from any other source of any major reduction whatever.
Over the past two years, there has been a fall of about one-fifth in the manufacturing production and output of this country. That has been one major cause of the mass unemployment. The collapse of our manufacturing industry, on a scale never previously recorded by any figures relating to these matters, both in the older parts of the country, if one may so describe them and indeed those which were developing many of the new industries—both have been hit—with all the reverberations of that collapse, is the primary cause of the mass unemployment that we are now debating.
I wish to emphasise some features of that unemployment which should be constantly before us and before the nation in deciding how we must deal with it and how, tragically, we are failing to deal with it at present.
I turn first to the total figure of 2,600,000 and more unemployed. We shall no doubt hear later from the Prime Minister whether she now accepts the prophecy by the Secretary of State for Employment about the likelihood of that figure rising to 3 million, by the end of this year or the beginning of next year. The country has a right to hear from the Prime Minister whether she and the Government envisage the official figure rising to that total.
Within the total, of course, is a series of other figures which are almost equally appalling.

Mr. Tristan Garel-Jones: rose—

Mr. Foot: I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman later.
First, there are the young unemployed. This figure involves not just school leavers or 18 and 19-year-olds, although heaven knows, that is tragic enough. The April figures, which are not the most recent, as at least part of the figure is calculated on a three-monthly basis, show 876,000 people aged under 25 registered unemployed. If one adds those in that age group provided for in youth employment and other schemes, that figure would already be 1 million. Indeed, even without them, it is now probably nearing a total of 1 million people under 25 registered unemployed.
According to the estimates of the Manpower Services Commission, those figures will become far more serious still. The Manpower Services Commission predicts that of this summer's 1 million school leavers only half will be able to find a job this year, and by 1982 only one in three will find work. Youth unemployment is therefore one serious strand, far more serious than anything ever known in this country, at any rate since the end of the Second World War.
There is then the new phenomenon of unemployment among women. Although we do not have the latest figures, it is clear that the number is moving towards the 1 million mark. The April figure showed that 700,000 women were unemployed in Britain. I entirely agree with the statement in a newspaper a few weeks ago that we are facing a new phenomenon—mass unemployment among women on a scale previously unknown.
As women are among those who are most unlikely to register in full numbers, it is probable that at present the

total number of women unemployed is more than 1 million. As I have said, that is something that we have never faced before.
The right hon. Lady sometimes seems to make comparisons, and seeks to explain the unemployment figures by referring to other countries. But here again, our unemployment figures are much more serious than anything that we have faced in the post-war world. Over the past year, the total number of unemployed people in the great industrial nations of the world has increased by 3 million, and it has increased by 2 million in the EEC countries. Out of that increase of 2 million in the EEC, 1 million is represented by what has happened in Britain. The same applies to the 3 million figure for all the industrialised countries.
On those figures, our totals are extremely serious. I again underline the fact that they are more serious than anything we have had to contemplate this century. Certainly, when we take into account the figures for unemployed women and young people, the total is even more serious than anything we had to contemplate in the 1930s.
The right hon. Lady and the Government claim that figures on this scale must be tolerated. However, she has not yet said whether she thinks the totals will continue to rise to 3 million or beyond, although it is obvious that many of her Government colleagues believe that to be the case. Both the Prime Minister and the Government claim that this must be done so that we can defeat inflation. They argue that anything to deal with unemployment must be subordinate to that objective.
Of course, the right hon. Lady does not always tell us exactly what has happened to inflation. I know that this is the brightest jewel in the Government's crown, but it is a pretty smudgy one. Inflation now stands at 11·3 per cent. That is a large figure, and the rate has not yet gone down to the level inherited by the Prime Minister. Moreover, the basis on which the 11·3 per cent is arrived at is perhaps not the best way of calculating it. There are other ways in which inflation can be estimated, and I remind the House and the country that according to the Prime Minister this is the biggest problem of all.
There is another way of estimating the rate of inflation, and it must be considered. [HON. MEMBERS: "The TPI".] Yes, the TPI. We do not hear much about it these days. Indeed, I will give a prize to any of my hon. Friends who can recall a Minister who has referred to the TPI in the last three months.
As the battle against inflation is central to the Government's strategy, I should like to quote what was said by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury when the scheme was introduced. Let no one say that I am quoting anything that is irrelevant. I hope the House will be patient while I read this section from his speech, because it refers directly to the major claim made by the Government. The right hon. Gentleman said:
There has been a great deal of talk about the relationship of this index"—
that is, the new one—
to the Government's approach to pay and inflation. The only cure for inflation is an appropriate monetary and fiscal policy, and these we are pursuing.
He can say that again. He continued:
As for pay, our approach is clear: wage bargains should reflect the productivity and competitive position of the individual organisations, their profitability and the constraints implied by


the Government's monetary and fiscal policies. It follows that there is no case for using any index, whether the RPI or the TPI"—
that is the new one—
as a basis for wage bargaining. But I am a realist. I recognise that our habit of looking at indices, and at the RPI in particular, is too ingrained to be broken overnight and is unlikely to be changed straightaway by anything I say now. But what I do say and most firmly, is this: if you want a general guide to changes in the total costs facing taxpayers, look at the TPI, not at the RPI. It is a much truer guide.
If the right hon. Gentleman were here I would ask him what the TPI stood at now. It is not a figure that comes readily to the lips of the right hon. Lady. Nevertheless, the TPI—the much better guide to the real rate, as reinforced by the Financial Secretary—stands at 15·7 per cent.

Mr. Garel-Jones: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for having given way so early in his remarks. The House and the country will recognise that the Opposition have a duty to criticise the Government's policies. But does he intend, at any point in his remarks, to put forward his party's alternative policies?

Mr. Foot: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will show more patience in future. I do not know whether he listened to the earlier part of the debate. If he did so, he will have heard what was said on many of these matters. We will first examine the Government's policy. As I implied earlier, I am prepared to hold plenty of debates on this subject.
I shall turn to the second question that the country has the right to ask the Government. I underline my remarks about the scale of the problem that we face. It cannot be denied. Again, I underline the Government's failure to achieve even their own declared objective, which they say is a necessary cause of unemployment. Occasionally, the Government and the right hon. Lady have sought to escape the situation by saying that there will be an upturn in the economy. I hope that the right hon. Lady will tell us today when the upturn is expected. When will the recession end? The Secretary of State for Employment was wise enough not to make any prophecy, but the recession greatly affects Government policy.
Unfortunately, I do not see the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his place, but I shall put my remarks in the language that he understands. When will the "bottoming out" begin? That is a phrase of such felicity that I am sure that it must be the Chancellor's. No one else could have invented it. When will the bottoming out begin?
Although I do not see the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I am happy to see the Chief Secretary, who is a great authority on such matters. A few weeks ago he answered the point. He made a speech and used not his usual economic jargon, but highly technical language. He said that he knew what would happen. He said that he knew that Britain would get out of the slump. He gave a very good reason. He said that what came down must go up. I must take the liberty to reply to the right hon. Gentleman in equally technical language—"it ain't necessarily so". Things do not always work that way.
We could examine how Britain has got out of slumps before. The right hon. Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath) knows a great deal about this, because whatever else he may have done, he helped to get us out of a slump. He may not have done things the right way. He may have gone about things the wrong way and suffered for it ever since.

But it is the fact—I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman would be happy to acknowledge it—that the country has got out of these slumps on some occasions.
So far from exempting the anti-Keynesianism that is now orthodoxy among at least half the Cabinet, the only times when the country has got out of post-war recessions have been when Governments have taken action, using old-fashioned pragmatic methods, to overcome them. [Interruption.] I know that precautions have to be taken when that is done. There also has to be an expansion ordered by Government planning and deliberate action by the Government. It will not happen by accident. If anybody thinks that it will happen by accident, he has to fall back on the theories of the Chief Secretary and. I do not suppose that many people want to do that.
There is no great sign that we shall be able to escape from the recession unless the Government are prepared to move to very different actions from the ones they have been prepared to follow up to now.
That brings me to the important Cabinet meeting of last week. I have already asked many questions about it. I have referred to it as a crisis meeting. [HON. MEMBERS: "Were you there?"] I was not there, but I have here a good account of the meeting. If the right hon. Lady finds anything to dispute in the account, she will be able to correct me in due course. The account, which I greatly recommend to the House, is in The Times of Friday 19 June. It is by Mr. David Watt, a most eminent correspondent of The Times.[Interruption.] He is a pretty good chap altogether. Listen to what he says. he is describing not the Prime Minister and her associates but the others. I am glad to see that several of them are present tonight. They will be able to confirm the account.
Mr. David Watt does not like the term "wets". He calls them "the Cabinet doubters". That is a much more delicate phrase than "wets". He writes:
Their instincts tell them that the Prime Minister and the Chancellor are inflicting great and possibly permanent damage on the British economy, and indeed on British policy as well. But they cannot face the hard-line argument that the alternative strategy, even if its long-term merits were conceded, could do little to improve the Government's immediate prospects and might put at risk the one tangible success the Government may be able to claim—a small reduction in the rate of inflation".
I have dealt with that one.
I ask the House to mark the next passage very carefully, because it describes the mood among the Cabinet doubters and shows their plight. It also affects Conservative Back Benchers. It says:
They are obliged therefore to console themselves more or less with the framework of present policy.".
That is a terrible thing to say, but the right hon. Lady confirms it, for every time I have asked her she has said, "Oh yea, it will be the framework of present policy." It is a very gloomy thought for Conservative Members, especially for those with very marginal seats. Indeed, looking at them now, I recall that there was someone who put it even better than the correspondent of The Times. It was John Milton who said:
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed".
The more marginal the seats, the hungrier they are and the less they are fed. It is a sorry condition. [Interruption] I do not know whether hon. Gentlemen would prefer to have John Milton or more of The Times.
I caught the eye of the Leader of the House and I knew that he would not like it if I left him out. He might think that I am prejudiced. The Times says:


But it is already too late for that. Mr. Francis Pym, at the moment the man most likely to win a leadership election"—
[Interruption.] I do not want to spoil it for the right hon. Gentleman. I know that hon. Gentlemen would like to hear this but they must be quiet to hear it. I do not want the full glory of it to be impaired in any way.
It goes on:
the man most likely to win a leadership election, is delicately manoeuvring to distance himself from the Thatcher position"—
Hon. Gentlemen can see that; they must not miss this, because it goes on:
though not so far as to attract fatal accusations of disloyalty".
So he keeps the Secretary of State for Employment between himself and the Prime Minister. I wondered what he was doing in the Cabinet all this time, but I see before me a useful function.
Of course these are serious questions.

Mr. Tony Marlow: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Two and two-thirds million of his fellow countrymen are unemployed and all the right hon. Gentleman can do is make jokes.

Mr. Speaker: Order. That is not a point of order at all.

Mr. Foot: The hon. Gentleman who interrupted me, and some of the others, were not here. I am seeking to answer the debate and I have been present.
The right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) made a most important contribution to the debate. He said that he was alarmed that the Conservative Party might once again attract to itself these policies if they are pursued. I am arguing that apparently the right hon. Lady is insisting that they are to be pursued. That is the relevance of what I have read.
The right hon. Member for Chelmsford is right. He said that if that happened, the Conservative Party once again would have to bear the stain of mass unemployment, having been the Government that created it. The right hon. Lady knows, of course, that a whole variety of policies could be initiated. She has had them urged upon her not only by the Opposition but by the TUC and the CBI, which had programmes of expansion but she has tossed most of them out of the window. A number of her right hon. Friends in the Cabinet have tried to do it. If they have not, they have failed in their duty. Have they been silent after all these leaks and not presented an alternative to the programme to which the right hon. Lady still owes her allegiance?
We have. The TUC put a policy to the right hon. Lady. The CBI put a policy to her. The policy was for expansion and reflating the economy and trying to ensure that such reflation is not overborne by a mass of imports. It is a policy for trying to ensure that this time we embark upon essential reflation, without which unemployment will continue to mount. It is no good the right hon. Lady suggesting that there may be some upturn at some unspecified date. I know that she has to shift the date back. To deal with unemployment, it is not sufficient to have an upturn. It is not sufficient to have a situation where the crushing decline in British manufactures, over a period, comes to an end, appears to come to an end, or, in the phrase that is used, bottoms out.
To stop unemployment increasing, one needs not merely an upturn. One needs an increase in production of

about 3 per cent. One has to plan for it. One has to work for it. It will not happen by accident. If the right hon. Lady comes to the Dispatch Box today and says that all she intends to do is what she has stated previously, she will once again have missed the opportunity to try to change the policies that are causing such disruption. [HON. MEMBERS: "What is your policy?"] Hon. Members will have opportunities to debate this matter in the House and in the country. I understand how disagreeable my words must sound to Ministers. If they will not listen to me, they must listen to others. They should listen to the right hon. Member for Chelmsford. They should listen to the right hon. Member for Sidcup. Some of his silences are even more eloquent than his speeches. Every time he does not say what he thinks of the policies, we know what he thinks of them, particularly when the right hon. Lady says that the only way in which we worked and strove to escape from slumps that were not so severe as this was to have Government planning, Government direction and Government intervention. [Interruption.] I know that some Conservative Members, especially after dinner, do not want to hear the facts about unemployment. It is an old custom of the gentlemen of England. They will have to listen because the country will tell them.
I am sorry that the rest of the Conservative Party was not present to hear the right hon. Member for Chelmsford. Listening to his speech, I was reminded of the words of the person who talked of the great Conservative Party that destroyed everything. That was the comment made about a Conservative Party that, in past years, showed the same kind of rigid allegiance to the defeatist laissez faire policy adopted by the Prime Minister. That was the condemnation of Disraeli of one Conservative Government. It will also be the condemnation of this Government.
The right hon. Lady, in her first two years—it is too late according to these accounts for her to turn back—has once again destroyed the Conservative Party. The question that arises is how much destruction the country will have to suffer before that comes to an end.

The Prime Minister (Mrs. Margaret Thatcher): The right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Foot) wanted and secured a debate on unemployment. He has reduced it to a matter of farce. He dealt with the subject as he deals with every other subject in the only way that he knows—with his typical levity. I have never heard a more disgraceful speech on unemployment. Not one single aspect of policy did he put forward.
The right hon. Gentleman raised one or two points which I shall attempt to deal with at the outset. He referred to the present inflation rate of about 11 per cent. He said that it was slightly higher than the inflation rate that we inherited. Surely he does not take credit for his own Government for bringing the inflation rate down during their period of office. Has he forgotten that his Government did so badly that they had to call in the IMF. When they called in the IMF the rate of inflation had previously gone up to 27 per cent. It was a country ungovernable because inflation got to such a high level. Only after the IMF came in, after the Government pursued the IMF policies, did the inflation rate come right down and the economy get on a much better course.
The right hon. Gentlman referred again to the tax and prices index. I am the first to say that the tax and prices


index is higher. I am the first to say that taxation is higher than we would wish because we increased expenditure, rightly, because of the recession. But at least we had the courage to honour the bills, not by printing money but by increasing taxation. That was a much better way to deal with the problem.
The right hon. Gentleman for Ebbw Vale asked me to make predictions about unemployment. I quote what he said when he was asked to do the same from this Dispatch Box in 1975. He said:
No, I shall not make such a prediction. It would not be sensible. Indeed, I do not think that any Government have made predictions of the character suggested" .—[Official Report, 28 October 1975; Vol. 898, c. 1267.]
I follow the right hon. Gentleman. I shall not make such a prediction.
The right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale also asked when the improvement in the recession and the upturn will come. I cannot give him a precise prediction about that either. I am, naturally, dissatisfied with the current level of unemployment.
The figure is already much too high and the danger is that it will rise higher still for several months to come. Partly the trouble arises from the recession which has hit many countries besides our own. Our capacity to overcome the menace will depend on a combination of policies, not least immediately upon our success in curbing inflation."—[Official Report, 1 July 1975; Vol. 894, c. 1170.]
That was the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale.
Every speaker in the debate has expressed the deepest concern, which is shared by every Member of the Government, about the tragedy, the human tragedy, of unemployment. Unemployment, especially prolonged unemployment, is an evil and high levels of unemployment are a tragic waste of human and material resources.
These things, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) reminded us, are not in dispute. The argument is about the effective remedies to cure the evil. Finding that remedy is not easy. If it were, unemployment would not have doubled during the time that the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale was in Government, nor would it have nearly trebled in his constituency.

Mr. Geoffrey Robinson: The Prime Minister mentioned the importance of the length of unemployment. Will she confirm that the length of unemployment, not just the numbers, has dramatically increased? Does she agree that that shows that the problem is increasing far faster than any remedy by the Government? Will she confirm that the problem has increased by about 30 per cent?

The Prime Minister: The length of time in which some people have been unemployed has indeed increased. If the hon. Gentleman wishes to put down a question asking for a statistical figure I will, of course, give it.
I was saying that the argument is not about whether unemployment is a tragedy—that is not in dispute—but how to find an effective remedy. We have heard none from the Opposition Benches. I was pointing out that, had the right hon. Gentleman been able to find an effective remedy, he would never have allowed unemployment to rise by 1 million during his own time in office, nor allowed unemployment in his own constituency to treble.
Fine speeches did not stop unemployment rising then. The good intentions of the then Government did not create more jobs. Today, Labour Members, still with the best

intentions, have advocated the self-same remedies that failed before. If they were implemented, they would fail again. They are short-lived policies which would have, at most, a transitory effect. In the short run, Governments can determine prices, incomes and increase the number of jobs, but in the long run, economic considerations always exact their toll. Then the palliatives which were designed to avoid realities leave behind their own problems, and the solution becomes more difficult than before.
All the proposals put forward by Labour Members ignore the fact that resources are limited in relation to demand and that money spent to satisfy one need means forgoing another.

Mr. Neil Kinnock: It depends on one's priorities.

The Prime Minister: Labour Members do riot recognise that any budget is limited. Of course, every budget is limited, and money spent on satisfying one need means forgoing another need. If Labour Members do not understand that, they were never, never fit to be in Government. Such choices do have to be made, and to try to get round them by printing money is not only to debase the coinage but to debase the currency of politics.
The right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Varley) did not put up a single item of policy. His speech was almost totally devoid of any material about policy. He said that we bleat about where the money is to come from. Clearly, he would have printed the lot. However. if one spends money, it comes either from taxation or from borrowing. Certainly, we are spending a great deal. Indeed, if I may say so, we are spending rather too much. We are taxing very highly to finance things like the National Health Service, expenditure on which has increased by 2 per cent. What is the right hon. Gentleman's remedy for unemployment? He has none. His only so-called remedy is a remedy that has the name of reflation, which means creating inflation on top of inflation. That remedy, if such it could be called, has been tried before. If he creates inflation on top of inflation, the right hon. Gentleman knows that for a time it will create a few more jobs, until the increased inflation takes away jobs from a far larger number of people and unemployment rises again. Then what does he do? He adds another bit of inflation and another bit, until we have suitcase money of the kind that they had in Germany in the inter-war period.
Labour Members asked that the public sector borrowing requirement be increased. David Blake has given the figure of £4 billion; the TUC suggested £6 billion. David Blake says that the £4 billion would reduce unemployment by only 100,000. What it would do to inflation would take jobs away from our people far more than it would reduce unemployment. Then the whole problem would start again.
Time after time Labour Members have said "Reflate". Other hon. Members have admitted that we cannot put inflation in jeopardy and that we cannot risk increasing inflation. They have admitted that getting inflation down is the way to tackle unemployment. They have said "No, we do not want any more inflation. Taxes are already too high." Then comes the final trump card—"but we want a little controlled reflation now, a little bit of public sector expansion". That is precisely the same thing—the same reflation—which has failed before.
The hon. Member for Eton and Slough (Miss Lestor) and others said that spending the money paid in


unemployment benefit on jobs would be a better way of spending it. But if we put everyone back in jobs it would cost a great deal more. The money would have to come from profitable industry and that would ultimately put far more people out of jobs.
My hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Mr. Dunn), whose speech showed that he is more familiar with the 1930s than is the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale, pointed out that more Government spending does not necessarily reduce unemployment. Of course, it does not. There is a good case to be argued that more Government spending reduces the resources available to the private sector where they could be used very much better.
The question is not whether there are cuts, but where the cuts fall. Reductions in expenditure either have to fall on Government policy or have to be financed by taxation, and fall on the family. More money being taken by the Government means a good deal less for the family to spend for its own purposes and frequently the family believes that it could spend it better. [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Throughout the day we have had a debate in which hon. Members have been allowed to speak.

Mr. Eric S. Heffer: Why did you not get up when the Leader of the Opposition was being shouted down?

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton, (Mr. Heffer) should be quiet. Anyone who was present knows that the Leader of the Opposition was heard.

Hon. Members: No.

The Prime Minister: The argument has been put that we should have more public investment. Many of us would like to have more public investment, but two conditions have to be met. First, we must be sure that the money going into public investment brings a proper return to the community. Even Socialist economies insist on that.
We also have to find the resources. For years too much of such investment has produced hopelessly inadequate and often negative returns. If we look at steel, shipbuilding, coal or the railways we see that frequently that has produced negative returns. We have poured billions and billions of pounds into those industries. Where is the benefit to the community?
Most companies in the private sector would have used such resources better and would have produced profits for reinvestment and more jobs. Alternatively, they would have come under the discipline of bankruptcy, which does not apply to nationalised industries. That is why we are insisting, as with railway electrification, that new investment proposals are properly justified.
The second condition is that money for public investment has to come from somewhere. It is no good Labour Members telling the Government that civil servants, ambulancemen and every other public sector group that comes along should be given more, and telling us not to make manpower savings, if they want us to spend more on capital projects. It is no good their glibly saying that nationalised industries should just be allowed to borrow more. That must mean borrowing at the expense of the private sector or more printing of money.
We must find money from existing budgets and find projects that will give the sort of return that the public are entitled to expect from the use of their money.
Both sides of the House are united in wanting to see more jobs in the British economy. Both sides of the House agree that we have a special duty to the school leavers and to the young unemployed, a special duty to encourage training and retraining and a special duty to encourage short-time working instead of redundancies. I am proud of the fact that our programme of special employment and training measures covered about 947,000 people by the end of May.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Stafford and Stone (Sir H. Fraser) gave an interesting speech demonstrating his concern for the young and putting forward his project for community work. A number of us feel that a compulsory project would not be right. Other opportunities are available to a considerable number of young people, which might suit them better. If we were to have a compulsory project, we could not provide good facilities for all those who took part in it. We are interested in seeing as many young people as possible using their time to engage in voluntary work. We have recently increased the amount which they can earn by engaging in voluntary work without losing their unemployment benefit.
We can provide productive jobs only when people produce the goods and services which other people will buy. That means, above all, competing successfully with other countries. The policies put forward by the Labour Party and the policies of this Administration have to be measured against this simple criterion: Will they make this country more competitive?
The Leader of the Opposition asked for reflation and higher prices throughout the economy. That will not help to make us competitive. That is why we say that keeping inflation under control has to come first. The right hon. Gentleman and hon. Members on the Opposition Benches want a larger public sector and more loss-making monopolies charging higher prices. That will not make us competitive. It will put an intolerable burden on the many industries that are already profitable and struggling to stay profitable. That is why we say that we wish to demonopolise many of those industries and to make resources available to the private sector so that the private sector may flourish.
Members of the Opposition argue for import controls and protection—I shall deal with that in a moment—so that our industry is insulated from market forces. That will not make us competitive. Of course not. That is why we believe in a market economy which is so much better a bargain for the consumer and which is the sector which delivers most of the export goods overseas.
I must refer to pay. We hear precious little these days from the Leader of the Opposition about that. In his social contract days, he used to give the impression that he thought it important. Not now. Instead, he addresses the Transport and General Workers Union on nuclear disarmament while it tells him that it would not be prepared to discuss pay with a future Labour Government. However, it cannot ignore the fact that pay is a crucial factor in competitiveness and that until we pay ourselves what we have earned, we will continue to lose jobs.
May we look at the figures for one moment? As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment said, our competitiveness has deteriorated massively.


Partly, that was due to the strength of sterling, but it was also due to earnings rising so much faster than those of our competitors. Since 1977, our living standards have gone up by 15 per cent., while production has fallen. [Interruption.] It is serious. That is why hon. Gentlemen cannot bear listening to it. It is sound and it is serious—they are only used to farce. It is sound and serious, it makes sense and it is serious policy, which will produce the solutions in the end. I sometimes feel that Labour Members would rather have more unemployment than put into operation sound policies. They are concerned only with making political capital out of unemployment, but we are concerned with solving it. We are concerned with solving it and laying a proper base of sound jobs in the longer run—a proper base which we have not had.
The Labour Government took office with 600,000 unemployed. They left office with 1·3 million unemployed. They increased unemployment by 1 million. We have increased unemployment by 1 million, but we are pursuing—and are determined to pursue—long-term policies that will reduce unemployment and give the youngsters of Britain the chance of a future —[Interruption.] The Opposition cannot bear to listen to the facts.
I wish to say a word about profits. One of the reasons for higher unemployment is that the proportion of profits has fallen to abysmally low levels. Too much was taken out in pay, and companies were drained of profits. They did not have the resources left for investment. Without profits businesses must contract, employees are laid off, and there is no money for new investment. No new investment jeopardises future productivity and gives the advantage to our competitors overseas. That is what has happened. Against the figures that I have mentioned, it does credit to the resilience of our industries that output and employment have not fallen even further.
Attitudes are changing. More people are beginning to understand that jobs are lost if people pay themselves too much. Settlements are averaging single figures, and that without either a compulsory or voluntary pay policy. There are no distortions to unwind. There has been some improvement in industry's competitiveness. The new sense of realism must continue. Pay settlements must continue to come down, and the drive for improved productivity must continue. Only then will there be a real prospect of recovery.
A number of right hon. and hon. members mentioned incomes policy, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford, the hon. Member for Rochdale (Mr. Smith) and the right hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley). That is one issue on which I agree with Opposition Members. Incomes policies do not work. Characteristically, I do not think the Leader of the Opposition mentioned that topic in his speech. All the experience in Britain shows that, under Governments of both parties—however well-intentioned—neither statutory nor voluntary incomes policies have any lasting impact on wages or inflation. In the end they break down under their own weight, and in the process they create more and more distortion in the economy. Incomes policies, even those devised by the right hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. Steel), inevitably mean a further gulf between pay and productivity. Some people receive more than productivity justifies, and others less. Some feel that they are entitled to a pay rise as of right, regardless of performance. The result is that there are fewer jobs.
Except for their own employees, the Government cannot be responsible for determining pay in the private sector. It is for employers and employees to work out that between themselves. If they pay themselves realistically they benefit from greater job security—if not, they pay the penalty. Every time that we have tried an incomes policy it has not lasted for more than two years. The problems that have occurred during the unwinding of an incomes policy have more than cancelled out any benefits that accrued. Even the threat of an incomes policy sometimes means that the unions pre-empt with large wage increases. We cannot go that way again. It is a short-term palliative. We must take the long-term solution.
Many hon. Members suggested import controls. They are simply not possible over the generality of the economy. We could not possibly move to a siege economy unless we had only half our population. Import controls in general would shelter the inefficient, discourage modernisation and re-equipment, restrict consumer choice and result in rising prices and a falling standard of living. We have selective import controls to help particular industries through difficult times. Indeed, they have increased since 1970. Then they were effective only on certain cotton textiles. They now extend to a wide variety of textiles, shoes, coals and voluntary arrangements for cars.
Those who ask for import controls forget just how many jobs there are in Britain in exports and how much of our manufacturing output goes into exports. Millions of jobs depend on our maintaining access to and competitiveness in overseas markets. We export a greater proportion of our GDP than any of our major competitors—double the proportion of Japan and four times that of the United States. We must continue to keep up and, if possible, increase that share of world trade if we are to provide jobs for our own people in future.
The interesting thing is that those who often demand more aid for the developing countries are those who are the first to put up shutters against the goods coming in. Many of those countries wish to have more trade rather than more aid. We usually have a balance of trade with those developing countries. We have that balance through exporting to them engineering products and machinery. We cannot deny them the possibility of earning the money to pay for them by putting up the shutters on imports into this country.

Mr. Foot: As the right hon. Lady has apparently told the House and the country that in no single particular is she prepared to alter the policies that she is now pursuing, will she answer the question that she would not answer at the beginning of her speech and tell us whether in the light of those policies she thinks that the Secretary of State for Employment was right to mention the figure of 3 million unemployed? Does she accept that figure?

The Prime Minister: Unemployment will rise from where it is now. Of course it will because of the increasing number of school leavers and because there is a substantial increase in the numbers in the labour force. That is because fewer people are retiring and there are more school leavers. I regret that it will continue to rise, but the policies which we are pursuing are the policies which will get unemployment down in the longer run and which will create genuine jobs and give a sound basis for prosperity.
There are now clear signs that the worst of the recession is over. Manufacturing and industrial production in April


was at the same level as last December. Consumption has been comparatively buoyant in the first quarter and retail sales have remained at a high level. The numbers coming on to the unemployment register have fallen compared with the numbers coming on in previous months. There are a number of signs from which we can take encouragement. We have had pay settlements averaging single figures compared with settlements of over 20 per cent, last year.
In inviting the House to support the Government's motion, I make it clear that I do not question the genuine concern of Opposition Members and I do not doubt then-compassion. Equally, let them not doubt ours. We are dealing with one of the most complex and sensitive problems of our time. Neither compassion nor rhetoric is enough. There is nothing inevitable about high unemployment. In the future as in the past we may be sure that there will be increasing demands for all kinds of goods and services to meet the continuing improvement in living standards. It is for us in this country to win our share of that growing trade at home and abroad by keeping our quality and costs competitive. There are good signs that British management and workers are beginning to do just that.
Hope—real hope—lies not in running from reality but in facing it. I ask the House to face that reality tonight.

Question put, That the amendment be made:—

The House divided: Ayes 249, Noes 311.

Dvision No. 227]
[10 pm


AYES


Abse, Leo
Dalyell, Tam


Adams, Allen
Davidson, Arthur


Allaun, Frank
Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (L'lli)


Alton, David
Davies, Ifor (Gower)


Anderson, Donald
Davis, Clinton (Hackney C)


Archer, Rt Hon Peter
Davis, T. (B'ham, Stechf'd)


Ashley, Rt Hon Jack
Deakins, Eric


Ashton, Joe
Dean, Joseph (Leeds West)


Atkinson, N.(H'gey,)
Dempsey, James


Bagier, Gordon A.T.
Dewar, Donald


Barnett, Guy (Greenwich)
Dixon, Donald


Barnett, Rt Hon Joel (H'wd)
Dobson, Frank


Beith, A. J.
Dormand, Jack


Bennett, Andrew(St'kp't N)
Douglas, Dick


Bidwell, Sydney
Douglas-Mann, Bruce


Booth, Rt Hon Albert
Dubs, Alfred


Boothroyd, Miss Betty
Duffy, A. E. P.


Bottomley, Rt Hon A.(M'b'ro)
Dunn, James A.


Bray, Dr Jeremy
Dunwoody, Hon Mrs G.


Brocklebank-Fowler, C.
Eadie, Alex


Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)
Eastham, Ken


Brown, R. C. (N'castle W)
Edwards, R. (W'hampt'n S E)


Brown, Ron (E'burgh, Leith)
Ellis, R. (NE D'bysh're)


Buchan, Norman
English, Michael


Callaghan, Rt Hon J.
Ennals, Rt Hon David


Callaghan, Jim (Midd't'n &amp; P)
Evans, loan (Aberdare)


Campbell, Ian
Evans, John (Newton)


Campbell-Savours, Dale
Ewing, Harry


Canavan, Dennis
Faulds, Andrew


Cant, R. B.
Field, Frank


Carmichael, Neil
Fitch, Alan


Clark, Dr David (S Shields)
Flannery, Martin


Cocks, Rt Hon M. (B'stol S)
Fletcher, L. R. (Ilkeston)


Concannon, Rt Hon J. D.
Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)


Conlan, Bernard
Foot, Rt Hon Michael


Cook, Robin F.
Ford, Ben


Cowans, Harry
Forrester, John


Crowther, J. S.
Foster, Derek


Cryer, Bob
Foulkes, George


Cunliffe, Lawrence
Fraser, J. (Lamb'th, N'w'd)


Cunningham, G. (Islington S)
Freud, Clement


Cunningham, Dr J. (W'h'n)
Garrett, John (Norwich S)





Garrett, W. E. (Wallsend)
Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon


George, Bruce
Ogden, Eric


Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John
O'Halloran, Michael


Ginsburg, David
O'Neill, Martin


Golding, John
Orme, Rt Hon Stanley


Graham, Ted
Paisley, Rev Ian


Grant, George (Morpeth)
Park, George


Grant, John (Islington C)
Parker, John


Harrison, Rt Hon Walter
Parry, Robert


Hart, Rt Hon Dame Judith
Pavitt, Laurie


Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy
Pendry, Tom


Haynes, Frank
Penhaligon, David


Healey, Rt Hon Denis
Powell, Raymond (Ogmore)


Heffer, Eric S.
Prescott, John


Hogg, N. (E Dunb't'nshire)
Price, C. (Lewisham W)


Holland, S. (L'b'th, Vauxh'll)
Race, Reg


Home Robertson, John
Radice, Giles


Homewood, William
Rees, Rt Hon M (Leeds S)


Hooley, Frank
Richardson, Jo


Howells, Geraint
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)


Huckfield, Les
Roberts, Allan (Bootle)


Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)
Roberts, Ernest (Hackney N)


Hughes, Roy (Newport)
Roberts, Gwilym (Cannock)


Janner, Hon Greville
Robertson, George


Jay, Rt Hon Douglas
Robinson, G. (Coventry NW)


John, Brynmor
Robinson, P. (Belfast E)


Johnson, James (Hull West)
Rodgers, Rt Hon William


Johnson, Walter (Derby S)
Rooker, J. W.


Johnston, Russell (Inverness)
Ross, Ernest (Dundee West)


Jones, Rt Hon Alec (Rh'dda)
Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)


Jones, Barry (East Flint)
Rowlands, Ted


Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Ryman, John


Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald
Sandelson, Neville


Kerr, Russell
Sheldon, Rt Hon R.


Kilfedder, James A.
Shore, Rt Hon Peter


Kilroy-Silk, Robert
Short, Mrs Renée


Kinnock, Neil
Silkin, Rt Hon J. (Deptford)


Lamond, James
Silkin, Rt Hon S. C. (Dulwich)


Leighton, Ronald
Silverman, Julius


Lestor, Miss Joan
Skinner, Dennis


Lewis, Arthur (N'ham NW)
Smith, Cyril (Rochdale)


Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)
Smith, Rt Hon J. (N Lanark)


Litherland, Robert
Snape, Peter


Lofthouse, Geoffrey
Soley, Clive


Lyon, Alexander (York)
Spearing, Nigel


Lyons, Edward (Bradf'd W)
Spriggs, Leslie


McCartney, Hugh
Stallard, A. W.


McDonald, Dr Oonagh
Steel, Rt Hon David


McElhone, Frank
Stewart, Rt Hon D. (W Isles)


McGuire, Michael (Ince)
Stoddart, David


McKay, Allen (Penistone)
Stott, Roger


McKelvey, William
Strang, Gavin


Maclennan, Robert
Straw, Jack


McMahon, Andrew
Summerskill, Hon Dr Shirley


McNally, Thomas
Taylor, Mrs Ann (Bolton W)


McTaggart, Robert
Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)


McWilliam, John
Thomas, Jeffrey (Abertillery)


Magee, Bryan
Thomas, Mike (Newcastle E)


Marks, Kenneth
Thomas, Dr R.(Carmarthen)


Marshall, D(G'gow S'ton)
Thorne, Stan (Preston South)


Marshall, Dr Edmund (Goole)
Tilley, John


Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)
Tinn, James


Martin, M(G'gow S'burn)
Torney, Tom


Mason, Rt Hon Roy
Urwin, Rt Hon Tom


Maxton, John
Varley, Rt Hon Eric G.


Maynard, Miss Joan
Wainwright, R.(Colne V)


Meacher, Michael
Walker, Rt Hon H.(D'caster)


Mellish, Rt Hon Robert
Watkins, David


Mikardo, Ian
Weetch, Ken


Millen, Rt Hon Bruce
Welsh, Michael


Miller, Dr M. S. (E Kilbride)
White, Frank R.


Mitchell, Austin (Grimsby)
White, J. (G'gow Pollok)


Mitchell, R. C. (Soton ltchen)
Whitehead, Phillip


Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)
Whitlock, William


Morris, Rt Hon C. (O'shaw)
Wigley, Dafydd


Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)
Willey, Rt Hon Frederick


Morton, George
Williams, Rt Hon A.(S'sea W)


Moyle, Rt Hon Roland
Wilson, Gordon (Dundee E)


Mulley, Rt Hon Frederick
Wilson, Rt Hon Sir H.(H'ton)


Newens, Stanley
Wilson, William (C'try SE)






Winnick, David



Woodall, Alec
Tellers for the Ayes:


Woolmer, Kenneth
Mr. Donald Coleman and


Wrigglesworth, Ian
Mr. James Hamilton.


Young, David (Bolton E)





NOES


Adley, Robert
Dykes, Hugh


Aitken, Jonathan
Eden, Rt Hon Sir John


Alexander, Richard
Edwards, Rt Hon N. (P'broke)


Alison, Michael
Eggar, Tim


Amery, Rt Hon Julian
Elliott, Sir William


Ancram, Michael
Emery, Peter


Arnold, Tom
Eyre, Reginald


Atkins, Rt Hon H.(S'thorne)
Fairbairn, Nicholas


Atkins, Robert(Preston N)
Fairgrieve, Russell


Atkinson, David (B'm'th,E)
Faith, Mrs Sheila


Baker, Kenneth(St.M'bone)
Farr, John


Baker, Nicholas (N Dorset)
Fell, Anthony


Banks, Robert
Fenner, Mrs Peggy


Beaumont-Dark, Anthony
Finsberg, Geoffrey


Bendall, Vivian
Fisher, Sir Nigel


Bennett, Sir Frederic (T'bay)
Fletcher, A. (Ed'nb'gh N)


Benyon, Thomas (A'don)
Fletcher-Cooke, Sir Charles


Benyon, W. (Buckingham)
Fookes, Miss Janet


Best, Keith
Forman, Nigel


Bevan, David Gilroy
Fowler, Rt Hon Norman


Biffen, Rt Hon John
Fox, Marcus


Biggs-Davison, John
Fraser, Rt Hon Sir Hugh


Blackburn, John
Fraser, Peter (South Angus)


Blaker, Peter
Fry, Peter


Body, Richard
Galbraith, Hon T. G. D.


Bonsor, Sir Nicholas
Gardner, Edward (S Fylde)


Boscawen, Hon Robert
Garel-Jones, Tristan


Bottomley, Peter (W'wich W)
Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian


Bowden, Andrew
Glyn, Dr Alan


Boyson, Dr Rhodes
Goodhart, Philip


Braine, Sir Bernard
Goodhew, Victor


Bright, Graham
Goodlad, Alastair


Brinton, Tim
Gow, Ian


Brittan, Leon
Gower, Sir Raymond


Brooke, Hon Peter
Gray, Hamish


Brotherton, Michael
Greenway, Harry


Brown, Michael(Brigg &amp; Sc'n)
Grieve, Percy


Browne, John (Winchester)
Griffiths, E.(B'y St. Edm'ds)


Bruce-Gardyne, John
Griffiths, Peter Portsm'th N)


Bryan, Sir Paul
Grist, Ian


Buchanan-Smith, Alick
Grylls, Michael


Buck, Antony
Gummer, John Selwyn


Budgen, Nick
Hamilton, Hon A.


Bulmer, Esmond
Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)


Burden, Sir Frederick
Hampson, Dr Keith


Butcher, John
Hannam, John


Cadbury, Jocelyn
Haselhurst, Alan


Carlisle, John (Luton West)
Hastings, Stephen


Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)
Havers, Rt Hon Sir Michael


Carlisle, Rt Hon M. (R'c'n )
Hawkins, Paul


Chalker, Mrs. Lynda
Hawksley, Warren


Channon, Rt. Hon. Paul
Hayhoe, Barney


Chapman, Sydney
Heath, Rt Hon Edward


Churchill, W. S.
Heddle, John


Clark, Hon A. (Plym'th, S'n)
Henderson, Barry


Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)
Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael


Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)
Hicks, Robert


Clegg, Sir Walter
Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.


Cockeram, Eric
Hill, James


Colvin, Michael
Holland, Philip (Carlton)


Cope, John
Hooson, Tom


Cormack, Patrick
Hordern, Peter


Corrie, John
Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey


Costain, Sir Albert
Howell, Rt Hon D. (G'ldf'd)


Cranborne, Viscount
Howell, Ralph (N Norfolk)


Critchley, Julian
Hunt, David (Wirral)


Dean. Paul (North Somerset)
Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)


Dickens, Geoffrey
Hurd, Hon Douglas


Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.
Irving, Charles (Cheltenham)


Dover, Denshore
Jenkin, Rt Hon Patrick


du Cann, Rt Hon Edward
Johnson Smith, Geoffrey


Dunn, Robert (Dartford)
Jopling, Rt Hon Michael


Durant, Tony
Kaberry, Sir Donald





Kershaw, Anthony
Porter, Barry


Kimball, Marcus
Powell, Rt Hon J.E. (S Down)


King, Rt Hon Tom
Prentice, Rt Hon Reg


Kitson, Sir Timothy
Price, Sir David (Eastleigh)


Knight, Mrs Jill
Prior, Rt Hon James


Knox, David
Proctor, K. Harvey


Lamont, Norman
Pym, Rt Hon Francis


Lang, Ian
Raison, Timothy


Langford-Holt, Sir John
Rathbone, Tim


Latham, Michael
Rees, Peter (Dover and Deal)


Lawrence, Ivan
Renton, Tim


Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel
Rhodes James, Robert


Lee, John
Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon


Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark
Ridley, Hon Nicholas


Lester, Jim (Beeston)
Ridsdale, Sir Julian


Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)
Rifkind, Malcolm


Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)
Rippon, Rt Hon Geoffrey


Loveridge, John
Roberts, M. (Cardiff NW)


Luce, Richard
Roberts, Wyn (Conway)


Lyell, Nicholas
Ross, Wm. (Londonderry)


McCrindle, Robert
Rossi, Hugh


Macfarlane, Neil
Royle, Sir Anthony


MacGregor, John
St. John-Stevas, Rt Hon N.


MacKay, John (Argyll)
Scott, Nicholas


Macmillan, Rt Hon M.
Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)


McNair-Wilson, M. (N'bury)
Shaw, Michael (Scarborough,


McNair-Wilson, P. (New F'st)
Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)


McQuarrie, Albert
Shepherd, Richard


Madel, David
Shersby, Michael


Major, John
Silvester, Fred


Marland, Paul
Sims, Roger


Marlow, Tony
Skeet, T. H. H.


Marshall, Michael (Arundel)
Speed, Keith


Marten, Neil (Banbury)
Speller, Tony


Mates, Michael
Spence, John


Mather, Carol
Spicer, Jim (West Dorset)


Mawby, Ray
Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)


Mawhinney, Dr Brian
Sproat, Iain


Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin
Squire, Robin


Mayhew, Patrick
Stanbrook, Ivor


Mellor, David
Stanley, John


Meyer, Sir Anthony
Steen, Anthony


Miller, Hal (B'grove)
Stevens, Martin


Mills, Iain (Meriden)
Stewart, Ian (Hitchin)


Mills, Peter (West Devon)
Stewart, A.(E Renfrewshire)


Miscampbell, Norman
Stokes, John


Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)
Stradling Thomas, J.


Moate, Roger
Tapsell, Peter


Molyneaux, James
Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)


Monro, Hector
Thatcher, Rt Hon Mrs M.


Montgomery, Fergus
Thomas, Rt Hon Peter


Moore, John
Thompson, Donald


Morgan, Geraint
Thorne, Neil (Ilford South)


Morris, M. (N'hampton S)
Thornton, Malcolm


Morrison, Hon C. (Devizes)
Townend, John (Bridlington)


Morrison, Hon P. (Chester)
Townsend, Cyril D, (B'heath)


Mudd, David
Trippier, David


Murphy, Christopher
Trotter, Neville


Myles, David
van Straubenzee, W. R.


Neale, Gerrard
Vaughan, Dr Gerard


Needham, Richard
Viggers, Peter


Nelson, Anthony
Waddington, David


Neubert, Michael
Wakeham, John


Newton, Tony
Waldegrave, Hon William


Nott, Rt Hon John
Walker, B. (Perth )


Onslow, Cranley
Walker-Smith, Rt Hon Sir D.


Oppenheim, Rt Hon Mrs S.
Wall, Patrick


Page, John (Harrow, West)
Waller, Gary


Page, Rt Hon Sir G. (Crosby)
Walters, Dennis


Page, Richard (SW Herts)
Ward, John


Parkinson, Cecil
Warren, Kenneth


Parris, Matthew
Watson, John


Patten, Christopher (Bath)
Wells, John (Maidstone)


Patten, John (Oxford)
Wells, Bowen


Pattie, Geoffrey
Wheeler, John


Pawsey, James
Whitelaw, Rt Hon William


Percival, Sir Ian
Whitney, Raymond


Peyton, Rt Hon John
Wickenden, Keith


Pink, R. Bonner
Wiggin, Jerry


Pollock, Alexander
Wilkinson, John






Williams, D.(Montgomery)



Winterton, Nicholas
Tellers for the Noes:


Wolfson, Mark
Mr. Spencer Le Marchant and


Young, Sir George (Acton)
Mr. Anthony Berry.


Younger, Rt Hon George

Question accordingly negatived.

Main Question put:—

The House divided: Ayes 306, Noes 248.

Division No. 228]
[10.15 pm


AYES


Adley, Robert
du Cann, Rt Hon Edward


Aitken, Jonathan
Dunn, Robert (Dartford)


Alexander, Richard
Durant, Tony


Alison, Michael
Dykes, Hugh


Amery, Rt Hon Julian
Eden, Rt Hon Sir John


Ancram, Michael
Edwards, Rt Hon N. (P'broke)


Arnold, Tom
Eggar, Tim


Atkins, Rt Hon H.(S'thorne)
Elliott, Sir William


Atkins, Robert(Preston N)
Emery, Peter


Atkinson, David (B'm'th,E)
Eyre, Reginald


Baker, Kenneth(St.M'bone)
Fairbairn, Nicholas


Baker, Nicholas (N Dorset)
Fairgrieve, Russell


Banks, Robert
Faith, Mrs Sheila


Beaumont-Dark, Anthony
Farr, John


Bendall, Vivian
Fell, Anthony


Bennett, Sir Frederic (T'bay)
Fenner, Mrs Peggy


Benyon, Thomas (A'don)
Finsberg, Geoffrey


Benyon, W. (Buckingham)
Fisher, Sir Nigel


Best, Keith
Fletcher, A. (Ed'nb'gh N)


Bevan, David Gilroy
Fletcher-Cooke, Sir Charles


Biffen, Rt Hon John
Fookes, Miss Janet


Biggs-Davison, John
Forman, Nigel


Blackburn, John
Fowler, Rt Hon Norman


Blaker, Peter
Fox, Marcus


Body, Richard
Fraser, Rt Hon Sir Hugh


Bonsor, Sir Nicholas
Fraser, Peter (South Angus)


Boscawen, Hon Robert
Fry, Peter


Bottomley, Peter (W'wich W)
Galbraith, Hon T. G. D.


Bowden, Andrew
Gardner, Edward (S Fylde)


Boyson, Dr Rhodes
Garel-Jones, Tristan


Braine, Sir Bernard
Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian


Bright, Graham
Glyn, Dr Alan


Brinton, Tim
Goodhart, Philip


Brittan, Leon
Goodlad, Alastair


Brooke, Hon Peter
Gow, Ian


Brotherton, Michael
Gower, Sir Raymond


Brown, Michael(Brigg &amp; Sc'n)
Gray, Hamish


Browne, John (Winchester)
Greenway, Harry


Bruce-Gardyne, John
Grieve, Percy


Bryan, Sir Paul
Griffiths, E.(B'y St. Edm'ds)


Buchanan-Smith, Alick
Griffiths, Peter (Portsm'th N)


Buck, Antony
Grist, Ian


Budgen, Nick
Grylls, Michael


Bulmer, Esmond
Gummer, John Selwyn


Burden, Sir Frederick
Hamilton, Hon A.


Butcher, John
Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)


Cadbury, Jocelyn
Hampson, Dr Keith


Carlisle, John (Luton West)
Hannam, John


Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)
Haselhurst, Alan


Carlisle, Rt Hon M. (R'c'n )
Hastings, Stephen


Chalker, Mrs. Lynda
Havers, Rt Hon Sir Michael


Channon, Rt. Hon. Paul
Hawkins, Paul


Chapman, Sydney
Hawksley, Warren


Clark, Hon A. (Plym'th, S'n)
Hayhoe, Barney


Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)
Heath, Rt Hon Edward


Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)
Heddle, John


Clegg, Sir Walter
Henderson, Barry


Cockeram, Eric
Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael


Colvin, Michael
Hicks, Robert


Cope, John
Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.


Cormack, Patrick
Hill, James


Corrie, John
Holland, Philip (Carlton)


Costain, Sir Albert
Hooson, Tom


Critchley, Julian
Hordern, Peter


Dean, Paul (North Somerset)
Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey


Dickens, Geoffrey
Howell, Rt Hon D. (G'ldf'd)


Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.
Howell, Ralph (N Norfolk)


Dover, Denshore
Hunt, David (Wirral)





Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)
Pattie, Geoffrey


Hurd, Hon Douglas
Pawsey, James


Irving, Charles (Cheltenham)
Percival, Sir Ian


Jenkin, Rt Hon Patrick
Peyton, Rt Hon John


Johnson Smith, Geoffrey
Pink, R. Bonner


Jopling, Rt Hon Michael
Pollock, Alexander


Kaberry, Sir Donald
Porter, Barry


Kershaw, Anthony
Prentice, Rt Hon Reg


Kimball, Marcus
Price, Sir David (Eastleigh)


King, Rt Hon Tom
Prior, Rt Hon James


Kitson, Sir Timothy
Proctor, K. Harvey


Knight, Mrs Jill
Pym, Rt Hon Francis


Knox, David
Raison, Timothy


Lamont, Norman
Rathbone, Tim


Lang, Ian
Rees, Peter (Dover and Deal)


Langford-Holt, Sir John
Rees-Davies, W. R.


Latham, Michael
Renton, Tim


Lawrence, Ivan
Rhodes James, Robert


Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel
Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon


Lee, John
Ridley, Hon Nicholas


Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark
Ridsdale, Sir Julian


Lester, Jim (Beeston)
Rifkind, Malcolm


Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)
Rippon, Rt Hon Geoffrey


Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)
Roberts, M. (Cardiff NW)


Loveridge, John
Roberts, Wyn (Conway)


Luce, Richard
Rossi, Hugh


Lyell, Nicholas
Royle, Sir Anthony


McCrindle, Robert
St. John-Stevas, Rt Hon N.


Macfarlane, Neil
Scott, Nicholas


MacGregor, John
Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)


MacKay, John (Argyll)
Shaw, Michael (Scarborough)


Macmillan, Rt Hon M.
Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)


McNair-Wilson, M. (N'bury)
Shepherd, Richard


McNair-Wilson, P. (New F'st)
Shersby, Michael


McQuarrie, Albert
Silvester, Fred


Madel, David
Sims, Roger


Major, John
Skeet, T. H. H.


Marland, Paul
Speed, Keith


Marlow, Tony
Speller, Tony


Marshall, Michael (Arundel)
Spence, John


Marten, Neil (Banbury)
Spicer, Jim (West Dorset)


Mates, Michael
Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)


Mather, Carol
Sproat, Iain


Mawby, Ray
Squire, Robin


Mawhinney, Dr Brian
Stanbrook, Ivor


Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin
Stanley, John


Mayhew, Patrick
Steen, Anthony


Mellor, David
Stevens, Martin


Meyer, Sir Anthony
Stewart, Ian (Hitchin)


Miller, Hal (B'grove)
Stewart, A.(E Renfrewshire)


Mills, Iain (Meriden)
Stokes, John


Mills, Peter (West Devon)
Stradling Thomas, J.


Miscampbell, Norman
Tapsell, Peter


Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)
Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)


Moate, Roger
Thatcher, Rt Hon Mrs M.


Monro, Hector
Thomas, Rt Hon Peter


Montgomery, Fergus
Thompson, Donald


Moore, John
Thorne, Neil (Ilford South)


Morgan, Geraint
Thornton, Malcolm


Morris, M. (N'hampton S)
Townend, John (Bridlington)


Morrison, Hon C. (Devizes)
Townsend, Cyril D, (B'heath)


Morrison, Hon P. (Chester)
Trippier, David


Mudd, David
Trotter, Neville


Murphy, Christopher
van Straubenzee, W. R.


Myles, David
Vaughan, Dr Gerard


Neale, Gerrard
Viggers, Peter


Needham, Richard
Waddington, David


Nelson, Anthony
Wakeham, John


Neubert, Michael
Waldegrave, Hon William


Newton, Tony
Walker, B. (Perth )


Nott, Rt Hon John
Walker-Smith, Rt Hon Sir D.


Onslow, Cranley
Wall, Patrick


Oppenheim, Rt Hon Mrs S.
Waller, Gary


Page, John (Harrow, West)
Walters, Dennis


Page, Rt Hon Sir G. (Crosby)
Ward, John


Page, Richard (SW Herts)
Warren, Kenneth


Parkinson, Cecil
Watson, John


Parris, Matthew
Wells, John (Maidstone)


Patten, Christopher (Bath)
Wells, Bowen


Patten, John (Oxford)
Wheeler, John






Whitelaw, Rt Hon William
Wolfson, Mark


Whitney, Raymond
Young, Sir George (Acton)


Wickenden, Keith
Younger, Rt Hon George


Wiggin, Jerry



Wilkinson, John
Tellers for the Ayes:


Williams, D.(Montgomery)
Mr. Spencer Le Marchant and


Winterton, Nicholas
Mr. Anthony Berry.




NOES


Abse, Leo
Ellis, R. (NE D'bysh're)


Adams, Allen
English, Michael


Allaun, Frank
Ennals, Rt Hon David


Alton, David
Evans, loan (Aberdare)


Anderson, Donald
Evans, John (Newton)


Archer, Rt Hon Peter
Ewing, Harry


Ashley, Rt Hon Jack
Faulds, Andrew


Ashton, Joe
Field, Frank


Atkinson, N.(H'gey)
Fitch, Alan


Bagier, Gordon A.T.
Flannery, Martin


Barnett, Guy (Greenwich)
Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)


Barnett, Rt Hon Joel (H'wd)
Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)


Beith, A. J.
Foot, Rt Hon Michael


Bennett, Andrew(St'kp't N)
Ford, Ben


Bidwell, Sydney
Forrester, John


Booth, Rt Hon Albert
Foster, Derek


Boothroyd, Miss Betty
Foulkes, George


Bottomley, Rt Hon A.(M'b'ro)
Fraser, J. (Lamb'th, N'w'd)


Bray, Dr Jeremy
Freud, Clement


Brocklebank-Fowler, C.
Garrett, John (Norwich S)


Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)
Garrett, W. E. (Wallsend)


Brown, R. C. (N'castle W)
George, Bruce


Brown, Ron (E'burgh, Leith)
Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John


Buchan, Norman
Ginsburg, David


Callaghan, Rt Hon J.
Golding, John


Callaghan, Jim (Midd't'n &amp; P)
Graham, Ted


Campbell, Ian
Grant, George (Morpeth)


Campbell-Savours, Dale
Grant, John (Islington C)


Canavan, Dennis
Harrison, Rt Hon Walter


Cant, R. B.
Hart, Rt Hon Dame Judith


Carmichael, Neil
Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy


Clark, Dr David (S Shields)
Haynes, Frank


Cocks, Rt Hon M. (B'stol S)
Healey, Rt Hon Denis


Concannon, Rt Hon J. D.
Heffer, Eric S.


Conlan, Bernard
Hogg, N. (E Dunb't'nshire)


Cook, Robin F.
Holland, S. (L'b'th, Vauxh'll)


Cowans, Harry
Home Robertson, John


Crowther, J. S.
Homewood, William


Cryer, Bob
Hooley, Frank


Cunliffe, Lawrence
Howells, Geraint


Cunningham, G. (Islington S)
Huckfield, Les


Cunningham, Dr J. (W'h'n)
Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)


Dalyell, Tam
Hughes, Roy (Newport)


Davidson, Arthur
Janner, Hon Greville


Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (L'lli)
Jay, Rt Hon Douglas


Davies, Ifor (Gower)
John, Brynmor


Davis, Clinton (Hackney C)
Johnson, James (Hull West)


Davis, T. (B'ham, Stechf'd)
Johnson, Walter (Derby S)


Deakins, Eric
Johnston, Russell (Inverness)


Dean, Joseph (Leeds West)
Jones, Rt Hon Alec (Rh'dda)


Dempsey, James
Jones, Barry (East Flint)


Dewar, Donald
Jones, Dan (Burnley)


Dixon, Donald
Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald


Dobson, Frank
Kerr, Russell


Dormand, Jack
Kilfedder, James A.


Douglas, Dick
Kilroy-Silk, Robert


Douglas-Mann, Bruce
Kinnock, Neil


Dubs, Alfred
Lamond, James


Duffy, A. E. P.
Leighton, Ronald


Dunn, James A.
Lestor, Miss Joan


Dunwoody, Hon Mrs G.
Lewis, Arthur (N'ham NW)


Eadie, Alex
Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)


Eastham, Ken
Litherland, Robert


Edwards, R. (W'hampt'n S E)
Lofthouse, Geoffrey





Lyon, Alexander (York)
Rodgers, Rt Hon William


Lyons, Edward (Bradf'd W)
Rooker, J. W.


McCartney, Hugh
Ross, Ernest (Dundee West)


McDonald, Dr Oonagh
Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)


McElhone, Frank
Rowlands, Ted


McGuire, Michael (Ince)
Ryman, John


McKay, Allen (Penistone)
Sheldon, Rt Hon R.


McKelvey, William
Shore, Rt Hon Peter


Maclennan, Robert
Short, Mrs Renée


McMahon, Andrew
Silkin, Rt Hon J. (Deptford)


McNally, Thomas
Silkin, Rt Hon S. C. (Dulwich)


McTaggart, Robert
Silverman, Julius


McWilliam, John
Skinner, Dennis


Magee, Bryan
Smith, Cyril (Rochdale)


Marks, Kenneth
Smith, Rt Hon J. (N Lanark)


Marshall, D(G'gow S'ton)
Snape, Peter


Marshall, Dr Edmund (Goole)
Soley, Clive


Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)
Spearing, Nigel


Martin, M(G'gow S'burn)
Spriggs, Leslie


Mason, Rt Hon Roy
Stallard, A. W.


Maxton, John
Steel, Rt Hon David


Maynard, Miss Joan
Stewart, Rt Hon D. (W Isles)


Meacher, Michael
Stoddart, David


Mellish, Rt Hon Robert
Stott, Roger


Mikardo, Ian
Strang, Gavin


Millan, Rt Hon Bruce
Straw, Jack


Miller, Dr M. S. (E Kilbride)
Summerskill, Hon Dr Shirley


Mitchell, Austin (Grimsby)
Taylor, Mrs Ann (Bolton W)


Mitchell, R. C. (Soton Itchen)
Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)


Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)
Thomas, Jeffrey (Abettillery)


Morris, Rt Hon C. (O'shaw)
Thomas, Mike (Newcastle E)


Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)
Thomas, Dr R.(Carmarthen)


Morton, George
Thorne, Stan (Preston South)


Moyle, Rt Hon Roland
Tilley, John


Mulley, Rt Hon Frederick
Tinn, James


Newens, Stanley
Torney, Tom


Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon
Urwin, Rt Hon Tom


Ogden, Eric
Varley, Rt Hon Eric G.


O'Halloran, Michael
Wainwright, R.(Colne V)


O'Neill, Martin
Walker, Rt Hon H.(D'caster)


Orme, Rt Hon Stanley
Watkins, David


Paisley, Rev Ian
Weetch, Ken


Park, George
Welsh, Michael


Parker, John
White, Frank R.


Parry, Robert
White, J. (G'gow Pollok)


Pavitt, Laurie
Whitehead, Phillip


Pendry, Tom
Whitlock, William


Penhaligon, David
Wigley, Dafydd


Powell, Raymond (Ogmore)
Willey, Rt Hon Frederick


Prescott, John
Williams, Rt Hon A.(S'sea W)


Price, C. (Lewisham W)
Wilson, Gordon (Dundee E)


Race, Reg
Wilson, Rt Hon Sir H.(H'ton)


Radice, Giles
Wilson, William (C'try SE)


Rees, Rt Hon M (Leeds S)
Winnick, David


Richardson, Jo
Woodall, Alec


Roberts, Albert (Normanton)
Woolmer, Kenneth


Roberts, Allan (Bootle)
Wrigglesworth, Ian


Roberts, Ernest (Hackney N)
Young, David (Bolton E)


Roberts, Gwilym (Cannock)



Robertson, George
Tellers for the Noes:


Robinson, G. (Coventry NW)
Mr. Donald Coleman and


Robinson, P. (Belfast E)
Mr. James Hamilton.

Question accordingly agreed to.

Resolved,
That this House, deeply concerned at the hardship resulting from high levels of unemployment, supports the measures already taken to provide special assistance for those worst affected; and believes that increasing prosperity and employment can only be achieved on a permanent basis by defeating inflation and creating conditions in which British enterprise competes successfully at home and abroad.

Northern Ireland (Car-sharing Arrangements)

The Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr. David Mitchell): I beg to move,
That the draft Road Traffic (Car-sharing Arrangements) (Northern Ireland) Order 1981, which was laid before this House on 28 April, be approved.
I make no apology to Northern Ireland Members for being on my feet for the second time in the same day. It is my pleasure to move the draft order. In a moment, I shall set out the legal interpretaton of the order, but first I shall describe in layman's language what it does. It is to enable people to give lifts in private cars to neighbours, friends and those with whom they work, to advertise that fact and thereby to save themselves substantial costs which they can share with their neighbours. It holds out the prospect of the saving of fuel and strain to those who drive constantly as commuters each day to gather with a group of three or four and take it in turns to drive their cars to work. It should also help to reduce traffic jams, which will be appreciated by many people in Belfast especially. Not least, it will enable people to conserve money.
Many people working in the factories or shipyards in Belfast will gather on a regular routine pattern to save the costs of petrol in travelling to work. Hon. Members will be interested that that provides an opportunity for enabling voluntary service, particularly in the rural areas and isolated villages, to help neighbours and pensioners by taking them to do their shopping without incurring difficultis with insurance and so on.

Mr. James Kilfedder: I understand that the response to the legislation that was introduced in England some time ago has been poor. I hope that there will be a better response in Northern Ireland.
Does the hon. Gentleman realise that one of the major problems in Northern Ireland in this respect is that insurance companies, with their bases in Britain, penalise motorists in Northern Ireland, so that it is very difficult for them to get insurance rates that are similar to those for motorists in the rest of Britain, leaving London out of account? The insurance companies are giving the Ulster motorist a raw deal. Something ought to be done. The knuckles of the insurance companies ought to be rapped severely for the way in which they penalise Ulster people. I appreciate that this is not particularly related to the point that the Minister mentioned, but perhaps he can help.

Mr. Mitchell: I am aware that the response in the rest of the United Kingdom has not been as great as I would have hoped. That is part of the reason for my setting out, in layman's language, what we are seeking to achieve in the order. I hope that it may be relayed in a wider sense in Northern Ireland and that hon. Members representing Northern Ireland constituencies will seek to make widely known the advantages that the order will bring.
The hon. Member for Down, North (Mr. Kilfedder) referred to insurance. I shall take the House through the legal interpretation of the order, and he will then see where that leads us. He wishes to see lower costs for insurance in Northern Ireland. I believe that that is a matter for competition, and if charges are too high that should encourage others to come in.
This is a short order with the sole purpose of allowing motorists in Northern Ireland, as they are already allowed in Great Britain by the Transport Act 1980, to give lifts in their private cars to passengers on a cost-sharing basis without contravening the public service vehicle licensing and road service licensing requirements of the Northern Ireland road traffic and transport law.
Basically, Northern Ireland road traffic and transport law provides that any motor vehicle used to carry passengers for hire or reward must comply with public service vehicle licensing and road service licensing requirements. Any payment made by a passenger would bring the vehicle within the scope of these requirements unless the conditions of the car-sharing order were satisfied.
I know that many people apart from the hon. Member for Down, North worry about insurance. The order does not change the law on insurance, and vehicles must still be properly insured for the use to which they are put. Normal car insurance will not be affected by taking payment under the car-sharing arrangements in the order. In future, there will be nothing to prevent car sharing being advertised, the advertisements being placed in a newpaper, on a works notice board or in a shop window or such place.
It is not a lengthy order, but perhaps I may go through some of the detailed provisions because it is important that they should be on the record.
Article 3(1)(a) modifies the definition of "public service vehicle" by excluding from the definition any vehicle used in accordance with the car-sharing arrangements in the order. Paragraph (1) of the new article 66A is an introduction to the circumstances in which a motor vehicle carrying passengers for payment is not to be regarded as a public service vehicle and complements, as it were, the modification of the definition of "public service vehicle" which I have just mentioned.
Paragraph (2) of article 66A contains the conditions to be fulfilled when a car is shared for payment. These conditions are, first, that the car cannot carry more than eight passengers; secondly, that the total payment does not exceed the vehicle's running costs for the journey, including an amount for depreciation, wear and tear; and that arrangements for payments are made before the journey begins.
"The running costs of the vehicle" means precisely the costs attributable to the vehicle, including an allowance for depreciation and general wear, and not costs in respect of any labour or profit element. The costs I have in mind are petrol, insurance, vehicle excise duty, servicing and repairs. So long as a driver restricts the amount that he receives from passengers to no more than the amount it costs him to run the vehicle, he will be all right.

Mr. John Prescott: How does the driver know that?

Mr. Mitchell: Many people, I suspect, may agree simply to share petrol costs, and perhaps oil, servicing and repairs. The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) asks how the driver will know the amount. Many people have a shrewd idea of what it costs to run their cars. Those who have any doubt are probably in many cases members of the AA or some other motoring organisation which will have detailed records of the costs for different sizes of vehicle. The information is available.
For example, the cost for a 1,600-cc car, including petrol, oil, servicing and repairs, would be about 10 pence a mile. For a 1,000-cc car, the cost of petrol last year was 3½ pence and oil, servicing and repairs 3½ pence. This year, the total is about 8 pence a mile. That give a broad indication of the costs for which the hon. Gentleman asks.
The condition that arrangements for payment are made before the journey begins is aimed at preventing private drivers from acting as amateur taxis—for example, picking up passengers at bus stops along the journey. Driving around looking for passengers on the offchance is not permitted

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: Whereabouts in the order are the provisions which would prevent the driver driving around looking for passengers provided that in each case he obtained payment or made arrangement for the payment in advance?

Mr. Mitchell: It is not contained as such in the order, but it follows from the order. No one will find that it is worth while driving around seeking to pick up passengers as a business when he cannot make a profit. Those who run taxis are making a profit. While individual families may seek to give lifts to friends and to neighbours, the only person who would drive around seeking to pick up people at bus stops is someone seeking to make a profit. No one will seek to make a profit. Anyone who did would be breaching the terms of the order.

Mr. Peter Robinson: That is surely not logical following what the hon. Gentleman stated in response to the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell). Who sets the rate per mile? The Minister cannot do anything if a person says that the cost is 20p a mile rather than 10p a mile. What happens then?

Mr. Mitchell: The hon. Gentleman may not understand what I have already stated. One is not allowed to recover more than the cost of running the vehicle. There is no motivation to run a business, even a small taxi business, when one is not allowed to make a profit. If one makes a profit, one enters an area of tax problems and removes oneself from insurance protection.
Paragraph (3) makes clear that
 'payment' includes consideration of any kind, whether monetary or not.
It would cover the case where money does not change hands but cars are pooled and driving and lift-giving cars are shared in turn with other car owners.
Article 3 (1)(c) of the order adds new paragraphs (3) and (4) to article 94 of the Road Traffic (Northern Ireland) Order 1981, which covers the requirements under road traffic law for insurance against third party liability. The new paragraphs provide that in motor insurance policies or securities any restrictions on the use of a vehicle for social, domestic and pleasure purposes, or any exclusions in the use for hire, reward, business or commercial purposes, do not apply as regards a third party risk required to be covered by insurance when the vehicle is being used under the car-sharing provisions in the order.
Therefore, so far as the statutory insurance requirements are concerned, car sharers who comply with the provisions of the order will be covered by their insurance policies, with no risk of invalidating them because of any hire or reward exclusion in their policy.
Over and above these provisions, the motor insurers have agreed to extend to Northern Ireland the undertaking

that they have given for Great Britain in relation to car-sharing operations within the provisions of the Transport Act 1980. That undertaking operates not only in the limited sphere of third party liabilities required to be covered by insurance—that is, death or bodily injury to third parties, including passengers—but in relation to the whole cover provided by a full third party or comprehensive policy.
The net effect is that for the required third party liability the undertaking is reinforced by the new paragraphs (3) and (4) in article 3(1)(c) of the order. That should remove any concern by motorists about their insurance. I commend the order to the House.

Mr. Tom Pendry: We do not intend to oppose the order. The Labour Administration pioneered experimental car-sharing schemes after the passage of the Transport Act 1978. Three years ago we were in favour of experimentation. We remain in favour. However, we have serious reservations about the order. My criticisms fall into two categories which arise from the Northern Ireland situation.
On many occasions the Labour Party has stated its firm commitment to public transport services. We regard them as being essential for viable life in towns, cities and rural areas. A single bus carrying 30 passengers is a more efficient form of transport than 20 or 30 cars with passengers. Public transport is a better environmental choice. It takes up less room, creates fewer fumes and results in fewer accidents.
However, there are serious financial and occasional organisational problems involved in public transport services, especially in rural areas. In theory, most will agree that car-sharing is a relatively efficient form of rural transport which draws on resources which are already available and operates only when there is a demand. Unfortunately, car-sharing experiments show that car-sharing arrangements are not the complete answer to the problem of rural transport. They represent a peripheral change but an inadequate and unsatisfactory attempt to meet the need of rural communities in particular.
We fear that formalised car-sharing arrangements might undermine the marginal services of the network operators and make it financially impossible for them to continue. Although we do not have any firm evidence that that will happen in Northern Ireland, we have the results of research in the "Yorkshire" car-sharing scheme in West Yorkshire published in Traffic and Engineering Control last January. The findings show that the majority of passengers in lift-giving arrangements previously travelled by bus. The survey concluded that the impact of such arrangements on public transport must be regarded as a cost rather than a benefit to the community.
On those grounds alone, I strongly recommend that the Government defer the order so that car-sharing experiments can be carried out in Northern Ireland and the effects on public transport assimilated. It could be argued that the order legalises existing arrangements, but that is no excuse for not taking a thorough look at how the arrangements could undermine the viability of the public transport system in Northern Ireland. Buses made unremunerative by the new arrangements may be withdrawn, never to return. Indeed, the ultimate outcome of such a policy will, in our opinion, be to ensure the deprivation of transport services to those who rely on them


most—the aged, the infirm, the poor and the young; the sections of society about which we should be most concerned.
I hardly need remind hon. Members that Northern Ireland has the highest incidence of poverty of any region in the United Kingdom and that one-third of the families in the Province live below the poverty line. If marginally profitable public transport services are made unviable by an increase in car sharing arrangements, those people will stand to suffer most, particularly since few will have access to private cars in their neighbourhoods.
In view of the potentially damaging effects of the order, I ask the Minister, if he will not withdraw it, to keep a close eye on the effect of car-sharing arrangements on public transport and to ensure that they supplement, rather than act against, existing services.
The order may impinge not only on rural public transport services, but on urban services. Hon. Members, especially those who represent Northern Ireland constituencies, know that passenger transport in Belfast, in particular, involves special problems. Reference has already been made to the infamous black taxis in North and West Belfast which carry passengers at a premium to places where public transport will not go. They have been legalised. The high cost of insurance which was thought to be a deterrent to them has not undermined those services. Has the Minister considered whether the order will lead to the setting up of a rival maverick transport system, not in black taxis, but in another type of vehicle?
The order provides that car-sharing arrangements are not to be undertaken for profit. Such a rule will have to be rigorously enforced if it is not to be broken frequently. The Minister's reply to the hon. Member for Belfast, East (Mr. Robinson) was less than convincing. Perhaps he will give us a clearer picture of his view when he replies to the debate.
It is our duty to protect people from exploitation. If the public, especially in sensitive areas in Northern Ireland, are given no alternative form of transport to a car-ferrying service, they may pay the price demanded and keep quiet. Further, we shall have no control over the funds raised and it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that money raised through exploiting car-sharing arrangements could end up in irresponsible hands. Perhaps the Minister will aslo reply to that serious point.
The Opposition would like to have seen a more thorough investigation into public transport and the needs of the community in Northern Ireland before the order was brought before the House. Car-sharing and other low-cost schemes may play a useful role in certain circumstances, such as where there is no public transport, but they cannot offer a real alternative to scheduled services.
In particular, blanket legislation for such arrangements in Northern Ireland could have serious consequences in politically sensitive areas. I urge the Minister to look at the matter urgently. I hope that he will reply to the points that I have raised and will seriously consider not proceeding with the order.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: My hon. Friends and I do not take quite so jaundiced a view of the order as was expressed by the hon. Member of Stalybridge and Hyde (Mr. Pendry). We were somewhat puzzled at the

credit which he took to the former Administration for the 1978 Act in Great Britain, which did not seem entirely consistent with the criticisms which he had to offer. Nor is it easy to see how the experiment with car-sharing which he urged should be conducted in Northern Ireland could be conducted—lawfully at any rate—unless legislation of this sort was available.
On the face of it, this provision, both in Great Britain and now in Northern Ireland, seems to be a modest but not unreasonable response to modern conditions, particularly in view of the relatively high price of fuel and the diminishing availability, in any case, of public transport in remote and rural areas.
The Minister mentioned that the experience in Great Britain had been less encouraging than had been anticipated. I was a little disappointed that, after nine months' operation of the scheme in Great Britain, it was not possible for him, for the benefit of the House tonight, to obtain from the Ministry of Transport something more specific as to the volume which had been expected and the volume which, in fact, had been experienced in the last nine months.
Whatever is on the face of it, there may seem to be many opportunities for availing ourselves of the facilities which are legalised by these provisions. There is always the consideration of convenience, which often outweighs the apparent economy of car sharing. In judging the growth of road transport, we probably underestimate the convenience of being able to make a particular journey at a particular time and on one's own terms.
Moreover, the legislation does not make it possible for cars to be shared or for voluntaryy efforts to be made to assist the the elderly or the disabled in shopping or getting to entertainment; car owners can do that already, provided they do not charge for it. It enables the cost to be recovered, not on a tit-for-tat basis, but on a direct basis as between the owner of the car and those availing themselves of the sharing. Therefore, perhaps, in retrospect, it is not surprising that the usage in Great Britain has been less than had been anticipated.
There is one practical issue in the order which causes some anxiety: who will police the conditions? That is a matter of some importance because upon the fulfilment of the conditions depends the legality of the insurance cover, let alone the availabilty of the insurance cover. One can imagine circumstances in which the question whether the sum paid did or did not contain an element attributable to profit could be used to invalidate insurance to destroy a claim or even to create a breach of the law.
There is some difficulty in legalising the practice when the conditions under which it is legalised are so difficult to verify, both by the rest of the public and by those who are availing themselves of the facility and even by the person who is providing it. The Minister made some reference to sources from which flat-rate information bearing upon the cost of running a car could be obtained. But it would not be the flat-rate information under the terms of the order which would be relevant, but the actual cost of running and maintaining the car and the way in which it was run and maintained. Although a great many of those anxieties may not be practical in the majority of cases, there could be a small minority—the marginal instance—in which they could have great importance. The Minister should do more to satisfy the House about the


way in which his Department intends to exercise surveillance over car-sharing schemes and over the sums charged.
As the Minister said, the order applies to Northern Ireland provisions that have been available on the mainland in part since 1978 but in full since 1980. They came into force at the beginning of October 1980. My hon. Friends and I want to make a strong protect about the fact that the provisions for Northern Ireland have had to wait until now, and that there has been so big a gap between the facility being available on the mainland and its being available in Northern Ireland. According to article 1, the order comes into force
one month from the day on which it is made".
If it is made shortly after this debate, it will not come into force until the end of July. There will be a 10-month gap between the availability of the facilities in Great Britain—which were accompanied with great national publicity when they were introduced—and their availability in Northern Ireland. That is undesirable on general grounds. It is also undesirable because people in Northern Ireland have been misled into supposing that they were covered in the way that they read in the national news when in fact they were not.
That was not a point that we failed to bring to the attention of the Minister's predecessor, to whom my hon. Friend the Member for Antrim, South (Mr. Molyneaux) wrote as long ago as last July. In September the Minister's predecessor produced a folio letter explaining why it was not possible to apply the Great Britain provisions at about the same time on Northern Ireland. He said:
The direct extension of the Great Britain provisions to Northern Ireland would have been inappropriate as the basic Northern Ireland licensing code and its definitions vary in several respects from that applying in Great Britain.
That might be impressive if we did not have the order in front of us. Apparently, those immense differences of detail between the provisions applying in Northern Ireland and those applying in Great Britain are not so great that they cannot be dealt with on slightly more than one page of an order. I defy anyone to say that an Act of Parliament would be so overloaded as to have the water above the gunwale if it had included the two sections—it might have been even one section—which would have been necessary for its application to Northern Ireland. But, no, the whole thing was not to proceed at that pace.
In September it was decided that a Northern Ireland order would not only be necessary, but could be combined with other transport matters in a miscellaneous provisions transport order. Three months' further reflection led to a different conclusion. In December a greater sense of urgency prevailed in the Department. It was decided not to wait for the miscellaneous provisions but to go ahead immediately with a separate order to bring the facilities into force in Northern Ireland. Accordingly, the proposals for a draft order were issued with a consultation period that expired on 6 February. Despite the Minister's predecessor's expectation that he would lay the draft order in March, it was not laid until the end of April, and we are debating it at the end of June.
That is nonsense. When the legislation was passing in Great Britain, it was perfectly well known, or it should have been, that there was no reason to exclude Northern Ireland from its operations. There must be some communication between the Northern Ireland Office and the relevant Departments in Great Britain. There would

therefore have been no possible difficulty in excogitating the two substantive articles that are before the House so that a Northern Ireland Order could have been laid, if not simultaneously with the Royal Assent to the Great Britain legislation, at any rate shortly afterwards, so that there need have been no interval, or scarcely more than a month, in the operation in both parts of the Kingdom.
I begin to suspect that this type of argument, which has been deployed with tedious iteration in these debates, has begun to have some impression both upon the managers of Government business and upon the Northern Ireland Office, and possibly even upon the parliamentary draftsmen's department. Unless one is mistaken, an increasing amount of legislation in this Session is being introduced, as it should be, on a United Kingdom basis, so that all hon, Members can play a part in determining both the policy and the form of the legislation.
I hope that the order is a late trailer and that we shall have few, if any, further examples of the entirely unnecessary delay that this order represents in applying legislation to Northern Ireland, where by general admission if these provisions are useful at all they will be of public utility. I hope that we shall not see a repetition of that delay and that this debate will have served its purpose in reminding the Northern Ireland Office and the Northern Ireland departments, if they still need reminding, that when there is Great Britain legislation in preparation, or going through Parliament, they should be considering how to ensure that whatever application there is to Northern Ireland takes place as nearly as possible at the same time as well as in the same effective form.

Mr. David Mitchell: The hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Mr. Pendry) said that the Opposition gave general support to the concept. He seemed to be taking some pride in parenthood for the origin of the idea. However, he hastily claimed that the child was a bastard and that he did not want anything to do with it. It is rather difficult for him to back both horses at the same time. However, it may be his skill in so doing that finds him on the Opposition Front Bench.
I understand that the hon. Gentleman favours public transport as a concept and fears that the order will eat away at the viability of public transport. He referred to surveys that have been carried out in Yorkshire. The majority of people do not live on a public transport route. In rural areas, many people have to travel quite a long way to reach a bus stop. The order will provide a feeder service so that there is a counter to the potential disadvantages to which he referred.
I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the order is not a complete answer to the problems experienced by those in rural areas. However, I do not take such a gloomy view about its effect on public transport operators. The hon. Gentleman asked me specifically, if we are not prepared to withdraw the order, which we are not, to keep under review its operation, especially the potential for abuse by what are known as black taxis and the like. I readily give the hon. Gentleman that assurance. We will keep the matter under review and shall be grateful to learn of any indications of abuse that conic to his attention.

Mr. Pendry: I am grateful, but I also asked that the effect on public transport should be kept under review.

Mr. Mitchell: I assure the hon. Gentleman that, since public transport in the Province comes under my Department, I have a vested interest in so doing.
The right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) regrets that there are no statistics on car sharing in Great Britain in the past 12 months. Car sharing involves a series of ad hoc arrangements with friends, neighbours, people at work and members of one's cricket club or pub, so it is not by its nature capable of being statistically recorded. I hope that I have not misunderstood the right hon. Gentleman.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: How, then, was the Minister able to say that utilisation in Great Britain was less than expected?

Mr. Mitchell: We have a general feeling that the use has not been as widespread as anticipated. The right hon. Gentleman will have observed the recent correspondence in The Times, which gives a balanced view. My hon. and learned Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Transport dealt admirably with the matter.
I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman shares my wish that in a free society we shall not have statistical questionaires on how many lifts people give to friends and neighbours.
The right hon. Gentleman raised the important question of who will police the scheme. That consideration also applies to the existing circumstances. Why was there restraint in the past on people doing what they will now be able to do under the order? Had they done such things, they would have invalidated their insurance policies and brought themselves into the category of requiring a public service vehicle licence, so the practice was self-policing. Those who breach the order will find themselves in breach of the same regulations.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: Yes, but previously a mere matter of payment was sufficient to trigger the disabilities, whereas now it is the amount of the payment and the composition of the amounts that add up to that payment that makes the difference between applicability and non-applicability of the provision. There is a big difference in policing and ascertainment in the two cases.

Mr. Mitchell: I hesitate to disagree with the right hon. Gentleman, but it is a powerful self-policing mechanism. If somebody charges more, he will put himself outside the protection of the order. He would put himself into the hire business by setting out to make a profit. It has been said that servicing costs differ from one car to another, and no one will worry about ½p a mile. We are concerned with the person who deliberately sets out to use his vehicle for hire. In that circumstance, he would lose the protection of the order and put himself into all the disabilities that he would have been in had he made a charge under the previous arrangements.

Mr. Peter Robinson: The Minister has not explained how the order will be enforced. We come back to the 10p and 20p argument. How will the authorities find out whether someone is charging 20p? Will the Royal Ulster Constabulary make checks, or what will happen?

Mr. Mitchell: As I have already tried to explain, the order gives protection in certain circumstances. Those who breach the order are at risk. That has always been true. There has been nothing in the past to prevent private individuals from charging their neighbours for taking them

to work, except that if in so doing they breached the protection given under the existing regulations they would have been liable, first, with regard to the public service vehicle licence legislation and, secondly, they would have invalidated their insurance. Most of us as drivers would not risk invalidating our insurance because of the enormous liabilities which follow from that.

Rev. Ian Paisley: I thought that the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) was making the point about who will decide what is a fair price for the journey. Who will decide that one car costs more than another? Who will bring in the verdict that one driver can charge only £X or whatever it may be for the journey while another may charge more?

Mr. Mitchell: I hesitate to say that we are splitting hairs or splitting halfpences. If one is worrying about whether it costs 8p or 8½p per mile, nobody will contravene the law for ½p per mile. The only way in which people might deliberately contravene the law would be to make a profit, which would clearly be substantially different from the running costs of the car.

Rev. Ian Paisley: Surely the Minister is not facing the issue. If one car driver decides to charge a certain amount and another decides to charge less, who will make the decision that one is not charging enough or that the other, by charging more, is putting himself outside the terms of the order?

Mr. Mitchell: I am sorry if my earlier explanation did not satisfy the hon. Gentleman. I make the point quite clearly, as I made it earlier, that it is simply a matter of self-policing. If somebody charges too much, he will run the risk of invalidating his insurance policy. If that is not a major disincentive, I shall be exceedingly surprised.
The right hon. Member for Down, South referred to the delay in bringing forward the order and the fact that the miscellaneous provisions order had not been brought forward as originally intended and that this order had been brought forward in advance of it. I was not a Minister at the Northern Ireland Office at the time. My understanding is that this was to meet the representations of hon. Members from Northern Ireland that we should bring it forward as quickly as we could, but the decision was taken before I arrived in the Northern Ireland Office.
Having said that, I fully appreciate and understand the point that the right hon. Gentleman makes about the benefit that he sees in basic United Kingdom Bills covering not only Great Britain but Northern Ireland as well. He sees advantages both in timing and in the opportunities for participation by Members for Northern Ireland constituencies in the main Great Britain debate in Westminster. He also sees a series of constitutional advantages in principle. Matters of constitutional change are matters for the Secretary of State, but I undertake to bring the right hon. Gentleman's views to the attention of my right hon. Friend.

Mr. James Molyneaux: Would not the Minister concede that there is a further advantage? That is the advantage to the business managers of the House, and perhaps more importantly to the Patronage Secretary, who would be relieved of what I imagine is the unpopular responsibility of having to keep a great many of the hon. Gentleman's colleagues here for an hour and a half, which would be unnecessary if the matter were dealt with in the ordinary Great Britain Legislation.

Mr. Mitchell: It is clear that there are special problems where a Bill, because the corpus of legislation in Northern Ireland is different, requires substantial extension. However, I take the point made by the hon. Gentleman and by the right hon. Member for Down, South to the effect that in this case there was little addition. I shall draw that matter to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. The point has been clearly illustrated.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That the draft Road Traffic (Car-sharing Arrangements) (Northern Ireland) Order 1981, which was laid before this House on 28 April, be approved.

Burroughs Machines, Cumbernauld (Redundancies)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Boscawen.]

Mr. Norman Hogg: The new town of Cumbernauld celebrates its silver jubilee this year. Thoughout a 25-year period, Burroughs Machines has been the town 's largest employer. At one time it employed about 3,000 people. At the beginning of this year, it had a payroll of 1,600. This figure will be cut by half if the proposed redundancies go ahead.
In February 1981, 442 people lost their jobs. They will be joined by a futher 403 on 31 August if the company is not persuaded to pursue another course. The redundancies take place against a background of mounting unemployment in Scotland. On Tuesday, it was announced that 305, 801 Scots were without jobs. That is 13·5 per cent. In Strathclyde region the figure is 177,835, which is 16·1 per cent. The figure for the United Kingdom is 11·1 per cent. In Cumbernauld there is an acute problem of youth unemployment and the rate of adult unemployment has reached very worrying proportions.
The latest figures available demonstrate the serious situation that prevails in the town. For example, 1,691 males are registered with the Department of Employment as unemployed. In additition, 317 boys are registered as unemployed with the careers service, 1,025 females are registered with the Department of Employment as unemployed and 239 girls are registered with the careers service. The town mirrors the rate of unemplyment for the Glasgow travel-to-work area pattern. For males, that pattern can be seen in terms of 18·7 per cent. and for females 10·2 per cent. That is an average of 15·1 per cent. In all of this, the position of Burroughs is of primary importance. It is a major manufacturer of electronic business machines. Scotland and its new towns have a major share of that industry. Cumbernauld's claim to having a significant presence in that industry is established by Burroughs Machines. The company's diminishing size in Cumbernauld is, therefore, extremely worrying to the new town, which is anxious to maintain and expand a manufacturing base founded on new high-technology industries.
The loss of jobs at Burroughs represents a loss of skills that are not easily replaced and a loss to the community as a whole. The company's explanation of events at Cumbernauld follows the standard pattern—namely, falling markets and the trading position caused by the recession. However, that is less plausible when account is taken of the fact that Burroughs is in the process of setting up a plant 30 miles from Cumbernauld, in the new town of Livingston.
According to The Times of 10 September 1980, the company is also expanding at Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire. The Times reported:
Burroughs, the American owned computer company, is to invest £10 million at Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire which means the creation of several hundred jobs in its first phase. A 400 place residential training school is being built for completion by early 1983. It will be used to train Burroughs marketing staff from the United Kingdom and continental Europe and also customers' staff. Mr. Eric McGlone, Chairman of the company's Europe/Africa division, said yesterday that in Europe and Africa in general and in the United Kingdom in particular, Burroughs


had more than doubled its business during the past five years. Despite the worldwide economic situation, the company had every confidence that demand for its products would continue to grow. The new training school would supplement educational centres in France, the Netherlands, South Africa and Scandinavia. Burroughs also plans to set up a major European distribution centre for the export of computer systems to world markets and a large computer centre for the training school and an on-line database system for international communication".
That statement was contained in The Times.
Burroughs at Cumbernauld contrasts starkly with the confidence of Mr. McGlone and the developments at Livingston. It is not unreasonable to ask why there is expansion in at least two of the country's new towns and contraction at Cumbernauld, which has served the company well for over a quarter of a century. In addition, we learnt recently, in an article contained in the Electronic News of 10 June 1981, that
the Japanese factory, announced last month, will be making small business systems for the European market, among others.
In choosing new town locations, the company qualifies for various grants. The sums paid are made public some time after payment in a business news publication from the Department of Industry. The people of Cumbernauld want to know all the facts, not just the current grants being paid for current development by Burroughs but how much in grants has been paid to this multinational company by successive Governments.
All our new towns are in the fight to secure new inward investment. That is understood by everyone, but is it right that a company which in one town is receiving grants can expand while it is contracting its operations elsewhere?

Mr. Dennis Canavan: Many of my constituents also work at Cumbernauld. In fact, the convener of shop stewards, Mr. Arthur Donaghy, is a constituent of mine. I know that he and the other trade union leaders are fighting hard to prevent these redundancies. Does my hon. Friend agree that when we went to the Minister, the hon. Member for Edinburgh, North (Mr. Fletcher), it was almost a waste of time, because he is the lackey of a Prime Minister who is married to an economic policy which means that she refuses to intervene in such problems?
We have a multinational company given free rein by the Government to trample on its work force. That is at the heart of the matter. It is a waste of time going to see that clown of a Minister, who stands with his hands in his pockets refusing to intervene while jobs are destroyed in Cumbernauld and other places in Scotland by multinational companies such as Burroughs.

Mr. Hogg: I thank my hon. Friend for his helpful and colourful intervention. I agree substantially with much of what he said. I shall deal with the response that I received from the Minister on the occasion that my hon. Friend mentioned when we met him to discuss a problem involving the same company. When we met the Minister, he carefully explained the practice of the present and previous Administrations. He also explained the various criteria that apply for the payment of grants.
My complaint and the complaint of my constituents is that there is a fundamental flaw and weakness in the Government's dealings with companies that can, with such apparent ease, expand at one location and contract in

another, causing much anguish and misery in the process. That cannot be right. The time has come for the rules to be changed.
In the midst of all that has happened this year in Burroughs, the work force and the trade unions have acted with the utmost concern and responsibility. The company, the employees and the trade unions at Burroughs have a good record of industrial relations. The trade unions have the greatest confidence in the product. They know that the Cumbernauld-manufactured machines are of the highest quality. The encoder and the B80 and B90 series of computers were designed, developed and produced there and they have been in production since the middle and late seventies. The encoder has a successful sales record in Holland and West Germany and I understand that there have been recent inquiries from Austria. The workers believe that this success can be built upon, and I agree.
The confidence of the Burroughs workers is shared by my constituents. Several thousand have now signed a petition of support, and there will be even more support for the workers in the immediate future. A committee representing Cumbernauld and Kilsyth district council, Cumbernauld trades council and the work people has resoved to resist these redundancies. The Cumbernauld development corporation is also extremely concerned at the possible loss of jobs and the consequences and has, I believe, communicated directly with the Minister.
All who have addressed themselves to this issue have concluded that the need now is for an approach at the highest ministerial level to the top management of Burroughs in the United States of America. Such a visit to the Detroit headquarters of Burroughs is essential in the interests of Cumbernauld. The jobs must be saved and the company's future intentions for Cumbernauld clarified. The community is entitled to that.
I want everything possible done to save the jobs at Burroughs. This is necessary for the confidence of existing and potential employers in Cumbernauld. The unanimous view of everyone concerned for the future of the town is that Burroughs must expand, not contract. It is to that end that I ask the Minister to visit Detroit and meet the president and board of Burroughs. I offer myself to go to the United States to meet the company's chief executive. I know that the trade unions would also be willing to take that step. However, the seriousness of the situation demands action at the highest level. In this, the Government have a clear responsibility and are best equipped through all their agencies to do so.
I am interested to hear what my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling, Falkirk and Grangemouth (Mr. Ewing) has to say on this point, because he has taken a considerable interest in the problems of Cumbernauld.
My constituents and I expect a favourable and constructive response from the Minister tonight.

Mr. Harry Ewing: I am very grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Hogg) for allowing me a few minutes to intervene before the Minister replies.
I commend my hon. Friend for raising this subject on behalf of his constituents, as I do my hon. Friend the Member for West Stirlingshire (Mr. Canavan), who has his own constituency interest in Burroughs at Cumbernauld. Some of my constituents from Stirling are also employed at this factory.
I intervene for the Opposition because we regard what is happening at Burroughs as symptomatic of what is happening to the whole Scottish economy. I must take up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for West Stirlingshire. However unkind the Minister may consider it, there is a feeling that, whenever these major redundancies and closures take place, the Government sit back and wash their hands of them.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East said, we expect the Minister to make every effort to persuade the board and the chief executive of this company not to go ahead with the planned redundancies in August. With the 442 redundancies in February, the threatened 403 on 31 August will give people in Cumbernauld the impression that this factory is bleeding to death. That will result in a complete lack of confidence on the part of the people in Cumbernauld in the Burroughs Corporation unless the company, inspired and encouraged by the Minister, does something to restore the confidence of the people of Cumbernauld. What it can do is to be persuaded by the Minister to withdraw any threat of further redundancies.
It is significant that this is the second U-turn in Scotland to be seriously affected by major redundancies. We have seen what happened at Linwood once the plant there was allowed to close. The Minister stands condemned because of the Government's failure to save Linwood. I plead with him to do something about Burroughs to ensure that the planned 403 redundancies do not go ahead.
The Minister must appreciate the situation because I know that, early in his ministerial career, the Burroughs factory was one of the plants that he visited. I remember the photographs in the newspaper and the eloquent tributes paid by him to this modern company. We were given all the assurances that the people of Cumbernauld had naturally hoped for—that Burroughs, which has been there for quarter of a century, would remain there for a long time to come. But, lo and behold! A short time later the threat is that the company will not he there for long.
The Minister must appreciate the devastating effect that this move would have on the new town of Cumbernauld. This factory is not the kind of building that can easily be adapted to some other type of industry. It is a purpose-built factory for manufacturing the machinery and equipment my hon. Friend described.
I plead with the Minister to give us an assurance that he will not sit back and allow the redundancies to take place. I ask him to say that he will go to Detroit, that he will make every effort to encourage the chief executive and top management to come here and meet him, so that he can persuade them not to go ahead with their plan. The company cannot use the argument about market demand. As my hon. Friend has said, the company is expanding in other parts of the country. Any pretence that the markets are disappearing has been crushed by this expansion elsewhere. Yet the company plans drastically to reduce its operations at Cumberlaud.
Speaking on behalf of the Opposition and the Labour Party, I can say that we would give every encouragement to the shop stewards and the work force at Burroughs in Cumbernauld to do everything in their power to resist those planned redundancies. If we do not protest when the company comes for the 403 on 31 August, it will try to come back for more. We want to give those workers every

encouragement to resist the redundancies. We hope that we shall have the type of reply for which my hon. Friends have been asking.

The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Alexander Fletcher): I shall respond first to the hon. Member for Stirling, Falkirk and Grangemouth (Mr. Ewing). I do not wish, at this time, to go over the ground covered in today's debate, but the hon. Gentleman began by suggesting that the Government were unconcerned about the effect of the unemployment taking place at Burroughs, in Cumbernauld. The hon. Member for West Stirlingshire (Mr. Canavan) mentioned this point in his usual robust way.
What struck me about the main body of the unemployment debate this afternoon and evening was the complete absence of any Back Bench Labour Member representing a Scottish constituency. Scottish Members were scarcely present in the House for the main part of the debate and, as far as I could judge, not one tried to intervene. There are 43 Labour Members representing Scottish seats, and it seems shocking that they showed such a lack of concern over a debate which the Leader of the Opposition pleaded with the Prime Minister to hold. When the debate took place, Scottish Members were so unconcerned about unemployment in Scotland that they could not be bothered to attend.

Mr. Norman Hogg: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. An Adjournment debate does not afford much time. Surely it is not in order for the Minister to deal with a debate that took place earlier today. All the points that he is now raising are relevant to what happened earlier. He is not answering the points that I and my hon. Friends have put before the House.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Ernest Armstrong): That is not a point of order. The Minister is relating what he is saying to the problem of unemployment.

Mr. Harry Ewing: On another point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It is singularly unfortunate that this should happen when we are dealing with a problem that will affect 403 families in Cumbernauld and the surrounding district. May I ask you to guide the Minister on to dealing with the problem and not treating the matter frivolously?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I long to guide many Ministers and Back Benchers, but it is not part of my job.

Mr. Canavan: On a different point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it in order to ask that it be placed on record that some of us, including me, sat through the speeches by the Secretary of State for unemployment and the Prime Minister and learnt nothing?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: An Adjournment debate is very limited. We must not waste time.

Mr. Fletcher: I think that I have made my point, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that the Labour Party has no standing when it accuses the Government of lack of concern about unemployment. That is shown by the fact that those Labour Members now present could not be bothered to attend, or to try to speak in, the debate on unemployment this afternoon.
I turn to the specific point raised by the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Hogg), with the assistance


of his hon. Friends the Members for Stirling, Falkirk and Grangemouth and for West Stirlingshire. I well understand the concern that the hon. Gentleman expressed about the Burroughs factory, which I visited last August so that I would know at first hand what progress there was.
The hon. Gentleman asked that there should be a top-level meeting in Detroit. I visited Detroit last October to call on the headquarters of the Burroughs Machines Corporation so that I could establish contact with the senior executives and have access to them at any time. They equally have access to me and to my right hon. Friend th Secretary of State for Scotland at any time when matters concerning the Scottish factories arise. I received an assurance from the top management of Burroughs that it was entirely satisfied with its United Kingdom operations and with the Scottish manufacturing plants, and indeed with Cumbernauld, which is the largest factory in the Burroughs Corporation outside the United States, and the largest in Europe.
There are rapid changes in technology and in the market place in the electronics industry, and Burroughs is not immune. As it develops one product and one piece of technology in Cumbernauld, and as the market may change, it develops other products there and in other plants in Scotland.
Milton Keynes is indeed a customer training centre, as the hon. Gentleman told the House, and presumably it will be used to expand the company's customer base. Far from criticising that, he should agree that that can only be helpful to the Scottish factories, because in so far as the company expands its customer base it clearly provides more opportunities for the factories in Scotland to provide goods and services to those customers.
The hon. Gentleman said that he objected to the company reducing numbers in one new town and expanding in another. As for the expansion in Livingston, the hon. Gentleman will know, because he takes a keen interest in these matters, as I do, that an entirely new product range is being produced at Livingston. I can tell the hon. Gentleman from my knowledge of the electronics business and of what is happening in Scotland, which does not require any expert knowledge, that it is common for electronics companies to wish to develop different products and processes in distinct and different plants. There is sufficient evidence of that taking place in Scotland, not only in Burroughs but elsewhere.
I do not wish to minimise how serious it is for the new town of Cumbernauld and the surrounding area to lose jobs in these numbers. As I have already said, we have learnt over the years that the electronics industry and the companies involved in it are ones in which there is rapid change. The same experiences have taken place with Honeywell in Lanarkshire and with National Cash Register in Dundee, particularly in the period when they have moved from electro-mechanical devices to electronic and microelectronic devices, which has changed the whole nature of the product and the processes in the factories, and the skills required of the work force. [Interruption.] When hon. Members sit and mutter constantly—not least the right hon. Member for Glasgow, Craigton (Mr. Millan)—while any business of the House is being conducted, I am sure that at least the right hon. Gentleman will realise, if his hon. Friends do not, that Burroughs, like other companies in electronics, is dependent on world

markets. [Interruption.] So when they sit and mutter and say "What are the Government going to do about it?", they must realise that the customer orders on which the company depends are entirely related to the world market and to the business that the company is able to obtain in Europe, in Africa and elsewhere.

Mr. Bruce Millan: The reason we are muttering is that all we have had so far is a series of generalities. The question was what have the Government done by way of discussion with the company since the redundancies were announced to try to prevent them happening? We want an answer to that question.

Mr. Fletcher: If the right hon. Gentleman would mutter less and listen more, he might be aware that I answered that question immediately I began my reply to the debate, because I made it clear that I had visited the factory, that we have direct contact with the factory at Cumbernauld, that I visited the headquarters in Detroit, and that we have direct contact with the headquarters of the company in Detroit. [Interruption.] The whole point of these relationships, as the right hon. Gentleman should know, is that we are in constant communication with the company and discuss with it, in advance of any unfortunate redundancies of this kind, what the position is and make sure that the company or any such company is fully aware of the support and assistance that the Government make available.
The Burroughs company is fully aware of this because under successive Governments, as the right hon. Gentleman will know, it has received a substantial amount of Government grants and Government assistance. [Interruption.] What I want to say in the time that is available is that Burroughs still maintains a very substantial manufacturing operation in Scotland in three factories—at Glenrothes, at Livinston and at Cumbernauld.
It is a great disappointment to the Government, as it is to the hon. Members, that the number of people employed at Cumbernauld has been reduced so drastically in a relatively short time. But it is not peculiar to this company, despite the comments of the hon. Member for West Stirlingshire, because the numbers have reduced as the change from electro-mechanical to electronics and microelectronics has taken place, and the numbers have reduced in a similar pattern in other electronic companies in Scotland. I have mentioned two already—Honeywell and National Cash Register.
Our contact with the company assures us of its commitment to continue its operations in Cumbernauld. But equally the company assures us—if the right hon. Gentleman thinks he can get further assurance he is welcome to try—that it has no alternative, in the interests of continuing the operations at Cumbernauld, Livingston and Glenrothes, but to take these steps. It gives the company no pleasure to take these steps and it certainly gives the Government no pleasure to know that these redundancies have taken place.
We recognise in particular the sad disappointment that this is to the new town, and the chairman of the development corporation has been in touch with us about it and is anxious that the resources available to the new town should try to make up for these job losses and find new job opportunities in the new town in every way possible. In that regard the development corporation has


the full support of the Scottish Economic Planning Department, of the Scottish Development Agency, and of the new Locale in Scotland office that we have set up with the distinct purpose of increasing the inward investment in Scotland. So we have to bear in mind the position that the company has itself expressed, and the president of Burroughs Corporation has personally pledged to all

Cumbernauld employees that there are no plans for the closure of the factory. Burroughs said that it has no complaints about the performance—

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at fifteen minutes to Twelve o'clock.